DNF - thank you for the opportunity to read this book but unfortunately I was unable to finish it therefore unable to review

This book wasn’t for me it is extremely strange
It is very boring and badly written. It reads like a fantasy book at times
A poor read

I am afraid this one did not ring my chimes. The main problem is that characters burst onto the page and I could not satisfactorily answer the key questions as to whether they had any depth or why should I care about them.

Thanks to NetGalley who provided me with a copy.

Excellent idea, less than excellent execution. I loved Emma’s story but this needed to be a thriller OR a fantasy. The choose your own adventure could have worked with either so combining the genres for the book was a bit confusing in places and overall unnecessary.

I could not get into this book, ultimately it was not form me and I could not finish it. It may be one for other readers

This was a gripping thriller. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review.

I’m afraid I got very confused trying to follow the story and found it difficult to connect with the characters.
I didn’t finish the book.

Erma Bridges' life is far from perfect, but entirely ordinary. So when she is shot twice in a targetted attack by a colleague, her quiet existence is shattered in an instant.

With her would-be murderer dead, no one can give Erma the answers she needs to move on from her trauma. Why her? Why now?

So begins Erma's quest for the truth - and a dangerous, spiralling journey into the heart of darkness.

I know this was the thriller to be reading when it first arrived and I was disappointed not to have got to it at the time, but I guess reading it later and away from the hype I could perhaps come to a more balanced conclusion. I found an immediate connection with Erma’s academic work because I’m doing an MA in Creative Writing with it’s applications for mental health and well-being. Erma’s area of academic interest combines Creative Writing with cultural understanding and her current research looks at the cultural and personal impact of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, something that was very popular when I was a teenager. I guess they were a forerunner to the computer gaming industry. The reader enters an established story, often in the historical or fantasy genre, and is given choices to make that further the story. The reader might pick a way forward that feels right to them or they can use a dice to pick an option, adding an element of random chance to the tale. You are then directed to the next scene and the outcomes of your choice. Erma is writing an academic book on the subject and hires a research assistant to support her. The assistant, Jenny, isn’t a complete success however. She has a prickly manner and Erma is getting agitated about her unreliability. She asks Jenny to contact a writer called Archibald Moder who’s known as the founder of this genre. Then Jenny disappears. Suddenly, in the midst of the worry and concern about her disappearance she reappears. In Erma’s house. With a gun.

She shoots Erma, and leaving her employer seriously injured, she turns the gun on herself. It takes a long time for Erma to recover and she decides to spend some of it recuperating in Thailand. However, on her return she feels a need to discover what lead to Jenny’s breakdown, feeling that it might help her own psychological healing. She picks up the research Jenny had been doing for her, including the work on Archibald Moder and she finds a dictaphone that Jenny was using to record interviews. This is the first clue in an interesting journey.

The author structures the novel in an innovative way, bringing fantasy into the mystery genre already established. This is done by alternating chapters between Erma's point of view and that of Sero, who is a barbarian from a Choose Your Own Adventure story. I applaud innovation like this and enjoy some fantasy works immensely. However, I did struggle a bit to engage with this particular flit from fantasy to reality because it felt like I was being pulled away from the ‘real’ story. There’s even a part that’s solely from Serio’s viewpoint and it is structured as a Choose Your Own novel and I had to decide what Serio would do next. This was playful and intriguing, plus I felt the author used it sparingly so it didn’t take over.

It was brave of the publisher to go with something different and put such a huge marketing campaign behind it. I love that because it encourages other writers to be bold, weird and play with the conventions of novels. This is vital for keeping the form alive, so I think it’s important to give novels like this a try. It really was a viral campaign and billed as something totally different from the norm and I think it succeeded with that. For me, although it made me smile, it didn’t quite mesh and I felt the fantasy sections interrupted the building of tension and atmosphere. I also didn’t connect with the main character personally, just with her work. I thought the addition of Harlow the cat was rather marvellous though. All in all this was an intriguing read and I can imagine some readers will absolutely love it.

I struggled a bit with this story. There was little to fixate on and the plot was very confusing. It was a mixture of fantasy and thriller but difficult to follow.

I had seen a lot of hype about this book on social media so was keen to give it a try. The spiral introduces us to Emma an academic who is undergoing a disciplinary due to alleged inappropriate relations with a student. She is then shot and so begins a quest to undercover the truth about what has happened.
This was very much a book of two halves. Interspersed with the chapters about Emma was a fantasy element about a barbarian which I'm afraid just didn't work for me. The idea was that the book was a little like the adventure books we had as kids, but for me this fell flat. I did enjoy the story about Emma though, and when she uncovered a recording of a reclusive author of the aforementioned adventure books I felt the story really took off.
The writing was clearly good quality, and to write a book that is so complicated shows skill. However for me it was just a bit too complicated. However I do think this is probably going to be a bit of a marmite book and lovers of the old 'choose your own advertures' will probably love it.

Some people will adore this cleverly constructed thrilled but it, unfortunately, fell flat for me. I didn't connect with the characters and found the plot too confusing to enjoy.

This novel is promoted as crime noir, a sub genre I sometimes struggle.with. I struggled with the main protagonist and the storytelling and so did not fiinish.

There was a HUGE amount of online build up for this book which did pique my interest. Unfortunately this book just didn't do it for me - it seemed like three very different stories none of which held my interest.

Do you remember the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks which were very much in demand in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Iain Ryan clearly does as they play quite a significant part of the story in The Spiral.

For those that may not have put in the hours of fun playing adventures (I very much did), the story begins on page 1 and at the end of the first few paragraphs the reader is presented with a choice. For example: does your character go left (Turn to page 39) or go right (turn to 311) and so on – your story evolves. There were mulitple paths to naviate the story and most would result in a failure to “complete” the adventure but if you were told to turn to 400 you knew you had “won” the book and often this meant your character survived to fight another day. I loved these books and it is wonderful to know that they are still available 30 years on and that new titles are still being released.

But back to The Spiral. We are taking in Erma’s story and when we first meet her at the university where she works she is facing a disciplinary meeting. There have been allegations she is sleeping with some of her students, it appears the allegations may have subtsance behind them and Erma appears disappointed that some of the men involved would have come forward to support the claims. However, she is determined to fight her corner and is treating the disciplinary meeting with some contempt. It is this difficult introduction to the character which means Erma initially comes across as a confrontational character. Her life is about to be turned on its head though (and not because of the charges against her) as Erma is about to face a near death encounter which will result in her taking an extended leave of absence from her post to recuperate and deal with the trauma.

Interspersed with Erma’s story is a short fantasy adventure. Orcs and warriors and a developing story of a stranger trying to find the meaning behind a tattoo they have. It is a spiral and nobody can give a satisfactory explanation for the reason the spiral has been inked. The adventurer will slay his foes, pursue a quest to uncover the reason for the spiral and will keep the fantasy theme of the story uppermost in the mind of the reader. It works well and isn’t just there for padding – but it took a while to understand why so stick with it.

Erma slowly makes her way back into society, spending lots of her recuperation time practicing martial arts and mentally steeling herself to return to work. Although she cannot know it, the physical and mental recouperation will become invaluable. Erma is caught up in a dangerous story and Iain Ryan took her adventures in a very unexpected direction, the Endgame to The Spiral was proper page-turning drama.

I had seem some cryptic posts asking how the book would work on Kindle. Without any problem is the answer. Kindle can handle, maps, graphics and much much more so there was nothing in The Spiral which detracted from the enjoyment.

Enjoyed this one, nice to get a bit of a switch up in the reading and have a thriller with some different elements to give it a fresh feel.

A proper mind bender. Loved the throwback to the choose your own adventure books, and Erma is a great main character to drive the plot forward. Spliced in with some intriguing break-out chapters, whose significance becomes clear as you reach the climax.

When Erma Bridges is shot by a colleague in a seemingly random attack, her whole life is turned upside down. With her would-be killer dead, Erma has none of the answers she needs to find peace and start rebuilding her life. So begins her quest for , a journey that will take her beyond anything she ever expected...

I really liked the blurb for this one and was excited and curious to read it, but I really struggled with it. The story up to Erma's shooting was fine, if a little staid, but after that it just lost me. I got excited by the initial mention of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, as I had loved them as a teenager, and was really keen to see where that would go, but I just wound up confused and irritated. I didn't particularly click with any of the characters - I felt like there was a bit of emotional depth lacking in the writing maybe, as they fell a bit flat, and although I appreciate that the author tried to do something different - and that some readers will love it - the only thing that spiralled for me was my growing disinterest the further into the book I got.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who granted me a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A powerful story that is truly remarkable and electrifying with its unique suspense and characters that blows you away bravo a edge of your seat thriller.

This was a weird book. Weird in the sense that it was disjointed which made it difficult to pigeonhole rather than surreal. Having been a fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure books when they were first released, I understood what the author was trying to do, but it didn't really come together in the way I think he intended and it became more and more farfetched until it was so out there you half expected Fonzie to ride in on water skis to jump the shark.

There was a lot of potential here, but it simply didn't come together. Nevertheless, there was something about it I still enjoyed, so it wasn't bad, it just wasn't good.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bonnier Books UK for the arc of The Spiral by Iain Ryan.

4 star read for me, this follows Dr Erma Bridges whom is suspended after being shot by her research assistant Jenny, but she disappears and is missing so Erma traces her steps to find her but also her research in which she took with her.. This is full of twists and turns,

4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I just couldn't get invested in this book. I gave up at the midway point because I didnt care for the protagonist, just not for me.