#FridayReads 2024-02-02 – A Thriller With A Twist Week – ‘Almost Surely Dead’ and ‘Under The Skin’

This week, I’m reading two thrillers with a twist. One is a new release by an author I’ve read before and one has been sitting on my shelves for four years and is by an author who is new to me. One is an audiobook and one is an ebook. One was made into a film and I think the other one demands to be made into a Netflix mini-series. One counts towards my ‘Add it 2024, Read it in 2024‘ target and the other is one of the thirty books that I selected from my 2011-2021 TBR pile for my 2024 TBR Challenge.

I’m hoping to relax into these books and be carried away by the stories.

‘Almost Surely Dead’ by Amina Akhtar (2024)

I had a great time with Amina Akhtar’s novel ‘Kismet‘ (2022). For me, it was a five-star read that delivered a gothic serial killer thriller with a sharp satirical edge to its observations about the Wellness industry in Sedona.

When Amazon offered her second novel ‘Almost Surely Dead‘ for free as First Read last month, I snapped it up.

I’ve made a start on and I’m already convinced that Amina Akhtar will deliver a compelling thriller with a distinctive voice. The first scene is a doozie, the sort of thing most books deliver at end rather than dropping you into. Where do you go after such a dramatic start? Well, before you can get your pulse back to normal, Amina Akhtar has taken you to two new timelines and used two storytelling techniques which together told me that whatever is going on, it’s more complicated than it seems.

Take a look at these opening paragraphs and see if you’d like to know what happens next.

Two years ago

I always imagined my life would flash before my eyes when I died. Like a film. But instead I saw nothing. Just pure panic, and my brain went blank.

Wow, this is it? This is all my brain will give me? No saccharine Hallmark moments I never had?

You may think your thoughts will be different as you’re dying. But they won’t be, not really. Maybe you’ll wish you’d had more fun, loved more. I wished this would all be over, and death said, Sure, why not. Death is funny like that.

My would-be killer had his arms around me, so tightly I couldn’t move. If I tried to shift, he only held on harder. And he was inching forward, closer and closer to the subway tracks. He was going to throw me on them and watch me die.
Akhtar, Amina. Almost Surely Dead (p. 1). Mindy’s Book Studio. Kindle Edition.

Amina Akhtar is an American novelist and former fashion editor based out of Sedona.
Her satirical first novel, #FashionVictim, drew critical acclaim. Kismet, her second book, was set in the stunning and creepy world of wellness. Almost Surely Dead is her third novel.
Akhtar has worked at Vogue, Elle, the New York Times, and New York Magazine, where she was the founding editor of the women’s blog The Cut.

‘Under The Skin’ by Michel Faber (2000)

‘Under The Skin‘ has a reputation as a cult book that uses genre tropes to deliver something dark, disturbing and deeply human.

I’ve had it sitting on my shelves since 2015. I was prompted to pull it to the top of the pile when my local art cinema ran a Michael Glazer retrospective and I was reminded that I hadn’t seen his movie adaptation of the book. It stars Scarlett Johansson in one of her more challenging roles. Michel Faber is credited as a script writer so I’m assuming the movie is at least a little like the book.

Here’s the trailer for the movie. Take a look and see what you think.

Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of English language fiction. He has lived in Scotland since 1992.
His novelS are: Under the Skin (2000) shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. The Courage Consort (2002). The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), Vanilla Bright Like Eminem (2007), The Fire Gospel (2008), The Book of Strange New Things (2014) and a children’s novel D – A Tale Of Two Worlds (2020)