Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

If you are a frequent reader of my book blog, you will notice that I rarely read Sci-Fi novels. That being said, when I was first approached by Raquel to read her novel, Hamartia, I thought that the premise sounded very different from most Sci-Fi novels. Since the synopsis peaked my interest, I accepted to read and review it… and I am so glad I did!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

Grace’s nine-year-old son, Jordan, is dying. First, the Metagenesis disease will tear his soul from his body, and then it will kill him. Desperate for a cure, Grace agrees to take part in an illegal clinical trial cloning souls. Supported by her best friend Kay, the two embark on the ultimate “Vegas Vacation” to the past in search of the right soul to clone, racing against time to save Jordan’s life. But someone is trying to stop them and when they discover why Grace must make a choice: let her son die or kill her husband. If she kills her husband, she triggers widespread Metagenesis, sealing the fate of the human race with a new plague.
Humanity is counting on Grace choosing to let her son die.

Right off the bat, the story takes place starting in Toronto travelling to Las Vegas 80-years in the past (Las Vegas circa 2000). This was so coincidental, as the last trip I took before COVID was to Las Vegas from Toronto! The overall world building was one of my favourite things to read in this story, which stemmed from Rich’s stupendous writing.

Rich’s writing is fantastic, especially for a debut novel. At times, I thought that the writing was a little ramble. Rich includes a lot of detail in this story, which is appreciated, however I didn’t think that all of it was absolutely necessary. This also goes for some of the character dialogue. However, her word choice and overall writing devices were written incredibly well.

In my opinion, the best part of this novel were the characters and character development. As readers, we see the characters go through a lot in this story, and I really enjoyed reading them develop. I especially enjoyed Grace’s character and all of the emotions she goes through throughout this story. I felt really invested in Grace’s story while reading this novel, which helped me read this story very quickly.

Since I was a bit nervous to read a Sci-Fi novel, I was incredibly impressed by how thrilling it was! There are quite a few plot twists in this novel that I did not see coming at all, which added to my overall enjoyment of the novel. Rich did a great job of incorporating an equal amount of sci-fi elements – especially time travelling – along with both emotional and thrilling elements.

Overall, I was incredibly surprised by this novel (in the best way!), and rated it 4/5 stars! Thanks very much to Raquel Rich for giving me a copy of Hamartia to read and review, I apologize for how long it took me to finally read it!

Good Night Book Owls!