This book is billed as Horror but other than the content being somewhat horrifying, there’s no horror.  There should definitely be a trigger page at the beginning of the book.  Triggers include corpses, necrophilia, sexual abuse and probably others.

This is a case of some wannabe-entrepreneur inventing a need and then delivering a product.  In this case, Auden White markets corpses.  He promotes the idea that people who have trouble connecting with live people might find solace in cohabitating with a corpse. Of course, the necrophiliacs come out in droves but they aren’t the only ones.  Apparently, Auden has found an untapped need for people to connect with the dead, in a very real sense.  Tom is the money man who is there to evaluate the company’s prospects and determine if investing is a good idea.  Mara is Auden’s girlfriend and stepsister, and, eventually, Tom’s girlfriend.  Most of the book deals with the social and cultural results of this new market.  We see a lot of social media promoting the “Liv” concept; which is the name of Auden’s company. It seems to hit hardest with the young adults; who, of course, take the concept to levels that Auden never anticipated.  The story also deals with Tom’s visceral aversion to the whole idea but his opinions are not a factor in the world of high finance and investment.  And the story also dances around Tom’s attraction to Mara, who is off-limits to him; Mara’s increasing discomfort with her boyfriend’s business; and then, Mara and Tom hooking up.

As demand for bodies increases, the financial world starts to really take notice and as we saw with the famous Silicon Valley dotcom bust, the country is fragile and an upset in the supply and demand will play…badly. It’s played as an emotional addiction and guess how well fragile humans with a sense of entitlement behave when told they can’t have their toys anymore.  Yes, it was graphically horrible when young people who couldn’t get a dead body anymore decided they were entitled to go find their own.

I guess I thought the book would play more ironically which would have appealed more to me.  Instead, it plays rather straightforwardly; not in the science fiction genre but teetering on the speculative fiction fence.  There is no new science, just the usual embalming of the corpses.  And it’s not really horror, either. 

I’m with Tom in that I find the whole concept completely obscene.  It was horrifying in the extreme because I can actually believe this scenario might/could happen.  Social media has made a profound change in society which we are just barely comprehending.  Two hundred years from now history may examine this period and remark on how juvenile and naïve we were.  At least, I hope this is only a period in history.

The pace was fast which kept me involved in the story, despite my own aversions. The plot was adequate but relied heavily on social media to move the story forward.  The characters were somewhat shallow and not really engaging.  Overall, I think this story didn’t need to be written and I won’t recommend it.  ~~  Catherine Book