Very well-drawn characters. Their emotions, their restlessness was all playing in front of me. Everything was flawless about the book, including the title.

I received a free copy of the ARC for Leaping into the Unknown from NetGalley and am giving an honest review.

Actual rating 1.5 stars.

Plot
Leaping into the Unknown follows Lucy Firmin as she is recruited into a special division of MI5. She may not have the relevant qualifications but she does have the power to “leap” which qualifies her all the same. Leaping is the ability to astral project while dreaming. She learns this has to do with the famous Fibonacci sequence and begins to use her power to help solve cold cases that have no leads. Meanwhile, Freja Sarah is gaining more and more followers as she depicts herself as the new child of God, come to put humanity on the right path. MI5 need to stop Freja Sarah before she causes total civil disobedience but there’s far more at play than they realise.

Characters
I’m a pretty character-driven reader. I’m quite happy to read a book where not much happens as long as I connect with the characters. Unfortunately in this instance I didn’t. I didn’t feel like any of the characters were very fleshed out or had their own voice. You could have swapped the character names around at random and it wouldn’t have changed anything. They all acted and spoke the same, bar Freja Sarah who had a little more distinction to her. There was also a lack of character development too since everyone was the same at the beginning of the book as they were at the end which was disappointing to read.

Writing
Unfortunately I hated almost everything about the writing in this novel. I always hate criticising the way that an author writes as their personal style works for them but as a reader it was a huge chore to finish the book due entirely to the way it is written. The prose is clunky and repetitive as the author “tells” far too much. I don’t need to know every minute, mundane detail. For whatever reason the author also decides to put some of the chapters in first person and some in third person. I’ve never read a book that does this and I hope never to come across it again, it was distracting to say the least. There’s also a huge overuse of brackets throughout. Using brackets every now and then to convey information is fair enough but there was an instance near the beginning where it was used no less than 3 times in 9 lines, all in the same paragraph. It really started to grate on me whenever I saw it as there really isn’t any need to so – if the information is really necessary just keep it in the sentence.

My biggest gripe with the writing style though is the dialogue. One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is when dialogue doesn’t come across as natural. For me it can ruin an otherwise good book. The dialogue in Leaping into the Unknown is awful. In every couple of lines the character says the name of the person they’re speaking to as if the reader is too stupid to remember which two people are speaking. It was infuriating all the way through.

Thoughts
I’m gutted at how much I hated this book as the premise sounded so interesting to me but the execution just completely missed the mark. It was easy to see that the author had all the ideas there and had thought up a great plot with twists but there was pretty much nothing I enjoyed about this book other than what the plot could have been. The romance that occurs is very juvenile where the characters “begin to fall for” each other on day two of meeting, and are saying I love you within a week. I couldn’t take it seriously at all.

There is also a vaguely racist scene with the introduction of the only Asian character in the book. His name is Jamal and he has been assigned to investigate terrorism related crimes. The part I mention is as follows: “He looked up slightly, and in perfect English with no accent (why did I expect otherwise?” said, “My name is Jamal but all my friends call me Jay. I won’t begin to start spelling my surname,” he said with a hint of amusement.” I don’t know if I’d go as far as saying that is definitely racist but it at the very least comes across as racially insensitive and completely unnecessary to add.

This is a book I wouldn’t recommend picking up and I can’t say I’ll be interested in reading this author again.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, from Cranthrope Millner Publishers and #NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity to preview and review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Cunningly brilliant MC, well written, thoughtful story that obviously has through research throughout.