Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: Face Blind
SERIES: Glastonbury Tales, book 1
AUTHOR: J.L. Merrow
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 276 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 10, 2022
BLURB:
When even friends look like strangers, how will he ever find love?
Corin Ferriman was left face blind by the car crash that killed his ex. Even people he’s known for years are unrecognisable to him. Running from his guilt and new-found social anxiety, he’s moved to Glastonbury, where he knows no one—or does he? Repeated sightings of a mysterious figure leave him terrified that his ghosts have followed him.
Tattoo artist Adam Merchant left Glastonbury at sixteen, escaping from his emotionally distant mother to the father who’d left them seven years previously. Now, at twenty-five, he’s come home to bring his family back together. But in a cruel twist of fate, his mother dies before he can talk to her, leaving him haunted—perhaps literally—by her memory and his unanswered questions.
When Corin and Adam meet again after an eerie first encounter, Adam lays siege to the walls Corin’s built around himself, which start to crumble. But there are ghosts haunting them both, and while Adam longs for a connection beyond the veil, Corin’s guilt leaves him in angry denial that there could be anything after death. With the liminal festival of Samhain fast approaching, neither man is sure what’s real and what’s just a trick of the mind—or maybe something worse.
REVIEW:
Corin was in an accident that killed his ex, and he ended up with brain damage. Medically known as prosopagnosia, it is the inability to combine pieces to recognize someone’s face. First, let’s just say how devastating being face blind would be. It doesn’t sound like a horrible thing until you consider it. Your spouse, partner, best friend, mother, father, siblings – no matter who it is, you won’t recognize them by their face. Corin lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone else. Except he can’t recognize them. Even more horrible – he can’t even recognize himself in the mirror. It gets so stressful he moves away to a place where no one knows him, Glastonbury.
Glastonbury is Adam’s hometown and he has now returned home. He left his mother and sister seven years ago to live with his father. Now he’s back and had hoped to improve his relationship with his mom, but she has recently passed. Despite a rocky relationship, she’s left him her house. This puts a little pressure on his relationship with his sister, Evie. Adam was a graphic artist and now works as a tattoo artist, something people don’t understand but it makes him happy.
Adam’s mother was unavailable at best, neglectful at worst. “No one was coming to take him away from his cold, silent house with a mum who didn’t seem to want him.” Evie is bitter at their dad for leaving but you completely can understand why Adam, ten years younger and still at home with this mum, would want to go.
The two meet accidentally on the tor, and of course when they run into each other later at the tattoo parlor, Corin can’t recognize Adam and Adam really feels inconsequential. All Adam says is, “I’m not good with faces”, but that so understates the problem. Corin questions himself as to whether he should tell people. “Should he be upfront with people about his disability….If he’d simply told them at the studio that he was face blin, Adam would never have assumed he was being snubbed or that he was too boring to remember.” Easier said than done, though, because Corin is so ashamed of having brain damage, and he had people get angry, annoyed, or treat him like he was less than because of his face blindness.
Corin questions why anyone would want a relationship with someone who can’t even recognize them. Also, and I never thought of this, he can’t watch movies or TV. “Trying to watch TV was pointless – everyone looked the same in modern dramas, making it impossible to follow the plot.”
When Corin finally admits why he can’t recognize him, the scene is heartbreaking but hopeful. “I’ll never recognize you…Even if we hooked up, I’d walk past you in the street five minutes later.” For a minute Adam is hurt, because he knows Corin can recognize Scratch and Sasha but Corin explains it. “It’s called finding an identifier. Something I can recognize people by.”
Adam, though, is what a boyfriend should be. He thinks of ways to make things easier for Corin, “I’ll watch out for you coming back and wave so you know where I am.” Simple things but they mean so much to Corin.
The story has a paranormal flavor because Adam and Corin believe they have seen ghosts. Corin of his ex, Adam of his mom. It’s terrifying for both of them and really exacerbates the guilt they both feel about the death of their respective people. I’ll give no spoilers on that but some of it made me so sad.
One thing that really irked me, and just a personal thing, is how they called everyone, “my lovers”. I thought it was a typo of “my love” but no, it occurs five times and each time I questioned it.
This story has some wonderful side characters. Corin’s brother, Declan, is the ultimate big brother, worried about his baby brother and not taking no for an answer when checking up on him. Sasha, who owns the tattoo parlor where Adam works, is another one. But the shining star of side characters is Scratch. Wow, I loved him, and I wish I had someone in my life like that who has my back. Add in he is burly, tattooed, and gruff but soft-hearted and kind, and he’s the total friend package.
I admit, the descriptions of Glastonbury, the Tor, and the area’s history were fascinating and made me want to visit. I’ve read J.L. Merrow books in the past and liked them. This one is more angsty than the others, I think.
RATING:
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