Thank you to NetGalley and Carina Press for the digital ARC to review.

This was a wild ride of a book. I’ll be honest, my memories of this book are slightly hazy because I started it at 9 pm and didn’t stop reading until it was finished and I could just about see the first light of dawn. Listen, I’m 37 years old. I cannot be pulling all-nighters anymore. But in that moment I didn’t even stop to think about it, I just kept going until there was no more book left, which frankly I was quite annoyed about. 

Our main character Reece has the power of empathy, the ability to read a person’s mind and memories through touch. This ability is greatly distrusted in society, so empaths are closely monitored and controlled despite the fact that empaths are all pacifists and can’t tolerate even imagining suffering and violence. Aren’t they? 

Reece finds himself embroiled in a murder mystery and in the company of The Dead Man, a shadowy figure accountable to no one and rumored to be an incredible danger to empaths. So naturally Reece, who has the self-preservation instincts of a jellyfish, teams up with him to solve the mystery and slowly have his understanding of how the world works crumble at his feet. 

There are so many great elements to this story. The tension and suspense are tight without being distressing. The humor and banter is top-notch. It kept me on the knife’s edge while being tender and sweet and funny. I would kill a man just so Jamie would never feel one second of pain. It is slllooowww burn, and I have a feeling it will only get slower. It doesn’t trust corporations farther than it can throw them. It’s frankly glorious. 

Overall I loved it, I’m definitely going to read it again, and I’m just going to wait here petulantly until the next in the series is released.