The Many (The Many, #1)

by Nathan Field

[chymerra]

Karl’s sister, Stacey, came home acting very weird after a blind date. Concerned that she had been date raped, Karl asks her what the matter. She lashes out in a very inappropriate way….accusing Karl of having incestuous thoughts of her and wanting to sleep with her. Shortly afterwards, Karl moves out….unable to deal with the insane things she was saying.

The next time Karl sees her is at Thanksgiving and she acts like nothing is wrong. That is until Karl brings up that night. That’s when she goes bat poop crazy. She attacks their mother, twice, and then attacks Karl. Karl is able to restrain her and when she calms down, he convinces her to go to his friend’s mother….a respectable psychologist. What she reveals there concerns Karl but before he or the psychologist can act on what was told…..Stacey jumps out of the window of the office….10 stories up. But before she dies, she tells them who she went on the blind date with and now Karl is on a mission to discover what exactly happened to Stacey the night of her blind date.

Dawn is an 17-year-old living a good life with her mother, Isobel. Isobel, who had just broken up with her long-term girlfriend, had scored a date on a lesbian dating site. Even though Dawn thought the woman looked mean, she encouraged her mother to go out on a date with her. Which, in hindsight, could have been the worse thing she could have done.

Dawn wakes up the next morning to a vastly different Isobel. An Isobel who was disconnected and very short with her. An Isobel who hints at things that they both did that night…even though Dawn was home all night. Even so, Dawn was very surprised when she got up one Saturday morning and Isobel was gone. All she left her was a note. Panicked, she calls the police but gets a blown off. All she had left was to discover what happened the night Isobel went on her blind date.

As Dawn is dealing with that, Karl is dealing with the aftermath of Stacey’s suicide. After confronting her date, almost getting arrested and then hiring a PI, Karl meets a mystery woman who invites him back to her loft for a drink and some fun. Funny thing is….this mystery woman is the same one who Isobel had her date with. He barely escapes, after being drugged.

Dawn is dealing with her own stuff. Creating a fake profile on the dating site, she meets another woman who has had an encounter with the mystery woman. Meeting up with her and hearing what that woman had to say, Dawn goes to the police, only to be told that they couldn’t help her. She also gets a phone call from the mystery woman, who threatens her. After that phone call, Isobel shows up and is a mess. She starts to go after Dawn, who runs out of the house, and Isobel gets hit by a car and dies. Shortly after her funeral, Dawn is contacted by Karl and they discover that they have a lot in common…the main thing being that their loved ones had contact with both the mystery man and mystery woman.

The rest of the book, from that point on, was great. I liked that the author incorporated mind altering drugs and mind control experiments into the story. The whole back story about that was fascinating and I do wish that more time was spent on it and on the guy who was told to eat until he was obese and how it affected his life.

Dawn had to have been my favorite character in the book. She was smart, she was very sarcastic and she thought on her feet.

I did like Karl but I did think he was a bit of a dummy in certain parts of the book. Mainly Dawn’s blind date. I wanted to yell at him when he hung up on the police.

The plot twist was something that was hinted at the beginning of the book but wasn’t confirmed until almost the end of the book. And, to be honest, it was gross but it explained a lot.

The end of the book was very interesting. The main storyline was resolved but before it was, a whole other storyline was exposed and the end of the book definitely left it open for the next book.

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**