'What price would you pay to save the ones you love?'
Finn, DIA no. 568216/2/MI, is a despised man. His crime: Birth in a foreign country. He is free to leave New Albian injustice, but instead suffers the daily humiliation of being a Digitally Interned Alien in exchange for life with Sophie, the woman he loves. They dream of a normal existence, where their liberty and identity are not at the whim of the Albian bureaucracy.
Offered the opportunity to tutor the Area Commandant's teenage daughter, Catherine, he sees it good fortune finally coming their way. But when opportunity descends into nightmare, Sophie must choose between betrayal or allowing New Albany to destroy her husband.
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Insomnia has a way of opening the void, filling it with illusion and voices from long ago.
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(@PgupBooks, 17 March 2020, 440 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 23 July via @RandomTTours)
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First, the negatives. I loved this book so there's not much I didn't like. I really didn't like the cover. Or rather, the green colour of the cover. It didn't make the book look appealing at all. However, the book is incredible. It's hard to categorise; a thriller, a mystery, a dystopian novel with bits of other genres sprinkled in as well. New Albany's rule and structure remind me a lot of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale. It took ages to work out that a DIA is a name for an immigrant in the world of New Albany and this should have been made clearer earlier in the book. It's an incredible read. I didn't want to put the book down once I started. The long chapters are split into sections narrated alternately by Finn and Sophie and include flashbacks into Finn's childhood. The book is very dark at times as Finn takes up a post as a tutor for Catherine (Cat) who is an evil little b****. The ending had me in tears. I cannot recommended this enough.
