Reviewed by Becca
TITLE: Never Rest
AUTHOR: Marshall Thornton
PUBLISHER: Lethe Press
LENGTH: 243 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 21, 2018
BLURB:
Nineteen-year-old Jake Margate has had terminal leukemia for five years and is ready to let go but his mother has other ideas. She’s found a rogue doctor pursuing radical treatments and takes her son to a remote institute where he does seem to get better…at first. But then the treatment begins to fail in strange ways just as Jake begins to fall for another of the test subjects. Slowly, he realizes he’s been turned into something truly horrible. Two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author Thornton has written a contemporary queer twist on the Frankenstein monster story.
REVIEW:
This book is insane. Holy cow, I love it. Imagine being ready to die, actually dying, and then waking up as something else. I can’t give it away, but man, this book is so good.
Jake was ready to die. He was even talking to his father to try to help get his mother to accept the fact. But she has other ideas. She’s apparently been talking to a doctor that does research and may have found a cure. He doesn’t want to go but she pretty much makes him. When he gets there, it’s not at all what he expects. The treatment he starts getting is not what he expects. And soon, he figures out the treatments aren’t what they’re supposed to be. At all.
I don’t even know what I would do in Jake’s place. If I had finally comes to terms with the fact I was almost dead, I don’t know if I’d fight for something new or not. Well, that’s not true. I’ve been almost dead twice and I fought. But I’m a single parent too, so that’s a big factor. Jake didn’t want to. He was nineteen and didn’t want to go through all that crap anymore. He tried to fight his mom on going to do this research crap but she got her way. It doesn’t help much when you’re floating above yourself seeing everything once you’re dead. Kind of brings things into perspective. The things happening to him with this treatment are freaking him out as well. It’s a tough thing to keep dealing with. I felt so sorry for him. With all he’s having to endure now, I’d be even more ready to throw in the towel.
The doctor is nuts in a way. And to make matters worse, he’s trying to kill off people now involved with the experiment. Including Jake. But Jake finally had found a reason to live. If you can call it that. Maybe he can find a way to make it better for himself and Goth after all.
Such a good book. I fell in love with Marshall’s writing with Boystown and Pinx Video. To me, this is just another good book of his. It’s different, it’s gory to a point, and something you don’t expect, for sure.
RATING: 
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