Where They Wait by Scott Carson

​    Wow. Awesome. The cover states this is a thriller and sure enough, this book thrills. Mind you, thrillers are ubiquitous these days and most of them involve cheating and/or murderous spouses/bffs/strangers, secrets from the past and/or stolen babies/monies/goods. This one is more about stolen sanity. Sure, there are the prerequisite secrets from the past, but they are of a singularly unpredictable variety. In fact, this novel defies the standard definition and formula for the thriller genre at every turn so terrifically, that to just call it thriller is pretty reductive. Might be a good marketing ploy, but reductive all the same.
     For one thing it negates all of its supernatural leanings. Of which there are many. For another it presupposes clichés, of which there are few if any. Mind you, this is a very slick very glossy professional sort of a book that screams bestseller, dynamic, fast paced with pages practically turning themselves and each chapter ending so dramatically, you simply got to get to the next one, this is a tough book to put down. And you’ll have to, at 400 pages this isn’t exactly a one sitting read, but it is in spirit.
      So, this is a book about an app. Very modern. I just read one of those, Ruth Ware’s One by One, her latest desperate attempt to establish herself as the new Agatha Christie. That wasn’t original at all outside of the app idea itself. This is very, very original. It seems like yet another one of those mindfulness apps at first, something that yogatalks you into relaxation and lullabies you to sleep and yet beneath the initial gimmickness there’s a terrifying secret layer of mind control and nightmares beyond your wildest…well, nightmares.
      This is the sort of thing the novel’s protagonist, a recently laid off and restless journalist, Nick, stumbles into when he takes a seemingly easy, paid gig of doing a promo on a local app entrepreneur. It seems like a good idea, at first, get out of stagnant Tampa and come back to Maine, see his mom, see his old camp (summer cabin in Mainespeak), see his old bff…and yet, of course, nothing’s ever simple about going back. And then there’s the app and its sinister siren song, calling, calling Nick to the darkest corners of his mind and beyond.
       It’s a deadly tune and so far it has killed all those who heard it, but Nick is a perfect test subject for it, for he is a nightmare proof man, someone who doesn’t dream. And so, frightening as it is, a man who can’t dream finds himself in the middle of a living nightmare, one he can’t seem to wake up from. Will he survive the test? Read and find out. It’s so, so worth it.
       Aside from the excellent dynamic writing, the thing that really stood out about this book, the thing that really made it work is the clever interweaving of real historical tragedy with the modern technology advancements and situations straight out of the news. It’s such a terrific mix of real and speculative. Plus, it gives the narrative a haunting, terrifying backstory.
       All in all, this was excellent. Mind you’, I’d probably change the title to Burn the Night, a much more evocative and less clichéd, it seems, but at any rate, this was a great read. Riveting, exciting, terrifying, this is what literary scares ought to look like. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.