Dead Ringer by Nicola Martin – Book Review

PUBLISHERS BLURB 

Get ready to meet the other you.

Just upload your photo to get started. Using the latest facial recognition software, plus your votes, MeetYourDouble will find your doppelgänger.

She might be an astronaut or a model. He might live half a world away … or a few miles down the road. You share the same face. Who knows what else you might have in common?

Start now…

The idea is simple, vain, and exciting. Tap the app, upload a picture of yourself, find your lookalike. Set up a meeting to see whether you have anything else in common.

When Ella and Jem meet, the physical resemblance is uncanny, but their lives couldn’t be more different. One is from a tiny island in a deprived Northern community – pretty much the back of beyond – where she has no job, no boyfriend, limited prospects.

The other is a London socialite, an aspiring actress living in a multi million-pound mansion. By all appearances, she’s living a charmed life, but she’s got some serious shit to run away from. Both of them have. Can either hide in her double’s skin? And at what cost? Will it solve any of the problems, or merely compound them?

MY REVIEW

Jem and Ella meet afternoon being matched on the MeetYourDouble app. They may look alike but they are from different worlds.

Jem is a bold, brash party girl, an aspiring actor and singer with wealthy parents and has a flat in Chelsea.

Ella, is quiet, a cleaner in a hotel and whose parents run a failing caravan park and she lives in a tiny, shabby caravan in Cumbria.

Ella travels to London to meet Jem and Ella sees a different life. She returns home but Jem soon travels to Cumbria to visit. They decide to swap lives for a short holiday from their own messy lives……what on earth could go wrong?

I won’t say much more about the plot for fear of spoiling it, but I can this is a psychological thriller with a unique edge. It brings to life the destructive nature of envy and the reality that happiness is more than material things. 

Dark, tense, thought provoking and yet incredibly sad too. An utterly compelling thriller from the first to last page. 

Thank you to Anne Cater and Random Things Tours for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour,  for the promotional materials and a free copy of the book. This is my honest, unbiased review.

 

You can buy a copy here:  https://amzn.to/2PuNEAD

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Nicola Martin studied at the University of East Anglia and the University of California, Berkeley. After many years working as a senior copywriter in the low carbon technology sphere, she is now a freelance writer. Dead Ringer is her first novel.