I received a copy of this book from Head of Zeus in exchange for an honest review.

Jar Garlath has never gotten over the death of his college girlfriend Rosa who was suspected of taking her own life, and her body was never found. Jar is convinced that Rose may still be alive and has a habit of hallucinating her. But when he sees her, clear as day, at a train station, he knows something's up and it sparks a series of events that leads him down a dark and dangerous path as he tries to get to the bottom of what happened to Rosa.

This book was one crazy ride! Right from the very start, which sees Jar spotting Rosa at the train station, I was hooked! There was something about the writing - the desperation and urgency of both Jar's mission to find Rosa and Rosa's sadness over the father's death and what to do next - that really just grabbed me. This whole book just has your whole body one edge and her heart beating that bit faster as you have no idea of what's going to come around the corner. This is helped by short and snappy chapters which make the book a very fast-paced and easy read.

I really liked Jar as a main character. His feelings for Rosa were very genuine as was his grief for her. He was still clinging onto that bit of her, because he had never had closure due to there being no body. So, it was pretty understandable he would still be cut up over her disappearance/death. I did like that he had tried to move on, he did have relations with other girls - just none that stuck. He was also well aware that he had problems considering he was hallucinating Rose. I liked his friendship with Carl (though this book is the type that makes you suspect every character so I was looking at him suspiciously for a while) and how he was able to be open and honest with him about almost everything. It also might sound weird, but Jar was written in such a way that he felt like a writer. I could completely believe that he was capable of creative and emotive writing from how Monroe built his character in the book.

The ending of the book was just insane. As things started to become unwrapped and it became clearer what the truth about Rosa was, I was just transfixed. It got so dark and twisted, my stomach was really turning at points but I couldn't put the book down.

I will say that I really hated reading the parts during this book that discussed animal testing in labs and some past experiments on animals. I am big into cruelty-free products and this was just upsetting for me to read so I found it hard and anyone who is of a similar mind may also find these bits tough to read (there was nothing too descriptive, it was more the point that it was a reminder there are places that still do this kind of thing and that there were experiments on dogs to test out the 'learned helplessness - that that was a real thing and i hated learning that it had actually happened to innocent creatures.)

This book was a great, fast read though and I definitely recommend to people looking for a new thriller.