ARA Review by Rich Hosek of Final Notice

[Rich Hosek]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Final Notice.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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Final Notice is a novel that sits between the medical thriller and political thriller categories. What caught my interest is the book’s catchline, “What Would You Do If You Knew – For Certain – That You Had 10 Days To Live?” The premise is centered around a smartwatch that has the capability to determine, via constant monitoring of blood chemistry, if the wearer has only a short time to live, giving them a “final notice.”

“What would you do?” the author asks, spend time with family? Settle your affairs? Kill someone who was a menace to society? The novel envisions that a certain percentage of people will choose that last option, and, considering the trend among older Americans to arm themselves, this will be a decidedly deadly combination. The story follows several users of the device as they discover they have only a matter of weeks to live thanks to this new technology, and how they handle the news and flirt with the notion that it gives them license to do whatever they want to help set things right.

We also follow the inventor of the watch, an FBI agent, and a reporter whose storylines weave in and out of various episodes of carnage, some inspired by the watch and other sparked by various political and societal issues. This is where the story got a little muddy for me. There are so many disconnected stories going on that few of them receive the attention they are crying out for. The details are well researched and provide some interesting commentary along with the story, but the topics range far and wide, from immigration to school shootings, to health care.

The story would have been more effective if it were focused on a single issue, but what I missed most of all was an antagonist. That role is somewhat represented by the head of the NRA, but he is not really tied to the technology behind the watch, and other characters and ideas encompass the embodiment of the “bad guy” for the book. For this reason, I give the book a rating of 4 out of 5.

That said, I did very much enjoy the author’s invention and use of the “final notice” feature of the smartwatch featured in the book -- which saves it from dropping to a 3. It makes you wonder how close we are to such technology and that makes the primary theme of the story powerful and believable. The characters are also believable and diverse, and the dialog, on the whole, does a good job of carrying the story, though at times when the author is delivering commentary about the social issues the book covers it can be a little dry – but that is what one would expect from a book that tries to integrate solid social messaging within the story.

Final Notice also includes an Author’s note (and the audio version I enjoyed has a bonus song written and performed by the author’s wife) which, as a writer myself, I always enjoy reading. In it, he promises that this book is part of a series that hopefully will develop an overarching antagonist.

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