ARA Review by Janilou2016 of The Lost Identity Casualties
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ARA Review by Janilou2016 of The Lost Identity Casualties
The Lost Identity Casualties by Kim Ekemar, is a page-turning psychological thriller. Written for the most part in first person narration, it grabs the readers attention from the first page.
The main character is Matthias Callaghan, who awakes to find himself in a terrible physical state, complete with amnesia. He has been brutally attacked and mutilated but unfortunately is unable to remember why.
As he recovers his memory, and his physical health improves, he becomes determined to seek revenge on those responsible for his shocking plight.
In the Preface of this first book in the series, the author alludes to the face transplant, and loss of identity Mathias has suffered as a result. The shocking reality of how this situation came about filters back to Matthias, and he begins to plot his revenge, and a pathway to recover some semblance of a normal life.
The plot has incredible twists and turns, and while the reader may recognize some stereotyped bad guys, nothing is boring or dull at all about this novel. It can be quite gruesome in some descriptions.
As we follow Matthias Callaghan into his world of revenge, his multi-faceted personality development continues, and this reader was happy she'd never had reason to cross someone like this protagonist.
What I didn't like about this book: The main character, Matthias Callaghan certainly had every good reason to exact revenge, and most of the people he went after no deserved it without a doubt. But not all of them. I did find him a little difficult to connect with as a character with his eye-for-an-eye, cold-hearted revenge mindset, with no consideration for why someone might have reacted in a particular way.
I'm not going to deduct any stars from my rating of this book because of my personal beliefs about revenge - which is based on the ancient quote by Confucius; "Before embarking on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
At one point, Matthias did show compassion towards some of the innocent bystanders to his plot for revenge, but his attitude toward his wife, Julia, and his marriage was cold and uncaring, even given the circumstances surrounding their relationship.
I'd hoped Matthias might show some compassion toward his wife once her background story was revealed to him, but it didn't happen, and his final actions towards her were quite heartless. After this, It became even more difficult for this reader to feel connected to Matthias as a character or to understand his journey of revenge.
The same was true for most of the other characters in this story. I felt Matthias's wife, Julia, should have been given a better outcome, but I didn't feel particularly connected to her as a character. It was interesting to read the back story written in her point-of-view, but the connection she had to her husband's facial transplant was a little far-fetched.
The ex-partner, Allan seemed shallow as a character, and I wondered if he really could have attained the position he did in the business world when he appeared so inept and gullible on so many levels.
That said, I found the end of this book quite satisfying. It could easily stand alone, and yet, the author leaves us with an intriguing hook, that left this reader/reviewer quite curious about the next book.
I rate this book four out of five stars. It is a complex and fast-moving plot, but I believe it would be beneficial for the reader to be able to form a connection with at least one or two of the characters.
***
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