I’m thinking of ending things by Iain Reid

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

Pages: 224

Published: June 14th 2016 by Gallery/Scout Press

You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this deeply suspenseful and irresistibly unnerving debut novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is left stranded in a deserted high school, wondering if there is any escape at all. What follows is a twisted unraveling that will haunt you long after the last page is turned.

In this smart, suspenseful, and intense literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.

I need a moment to process this book and perhaps even a day, but I feel like a day would numb this initial feeling of…

Or maybe not, because I think generally this is one of those reads. A psychological thriller is meant to upend whatever it is you believe is going on and Iain Reid did just that.

This book takes place during a snow storm, mostly in a car and our main characters are “the girlfriend” who remains nameless and Jake. Jake is a strange character from the beginning and at least for me I didn’t trust him given the setting, something was strange – outside of his inability to connect, to feel like others. The Girlfriend depicts their relationship from the get-go to be odd and not quite romantic, in fact, she’s thinking about ending things, but still she decides to go on this trip to his parent’s place, during a snow storm.

As the story goes on we are brought into the present times, we find ourselves amongst the chatter, the gossip and see some truths that begin to make the entire book suspenseful, because you know the end is coming, but not how and certainly not why.

Strange things begin to pile on top of one another, eerie things, a strange caller, a man seen out a window, the memory of that strange man watching the girl as she slept…

I had a moment like this, where I was waiting and then AHH… I had to shut my iPad off in the midst of reading at night because my mind was running away from me, it was eerie and I’m too easy to spook when it comes to horror/suspense.

However, the twists were easy to pick apart and because of the present teasers in the book it’s easy to piece the story together and it made it less scary and more of a “what the hell” moment.

This was a first for me and I would say it was pleasantly twisted, I think for a while it will haunt me.

What didn’t work for me was there was a serious disconnect between the characters for me, there was no feeling there and perhaps that is the point considering… but there needs to be some bonding between reader and character that just didn’t happen. The overall world build of this particular book is small which is fine because this particular world is built between these two personas and that really works for this book because it adds to the eerie quality to it, they’re alone, they always seem to be alone… Hm. As far as the psychological aspects went, I think it nailed it spot on.