When four patients unexpectedly wake after being declared dead, their families are ecstatic and the word “miracle” begins to be whispered throughout the hospital. But the jubilation is short lived when the patients don’t respond to their names and insist they are different people. It is suggested all four are suffering from fugue states until one of the doctors recognizes a name and verifies that he not only knew the girl but was there when she died in 1992. It soon becomes obvious that the bodies of the four patients are now inhabited by the souls of people long dead.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher so I could join the blog tour.  My thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the opportunity to host a leg of the Second Lives blog tour.

For the first fifty (or so) pages of Second Lives we are introduced to the key characters. Half of them died shortly after we were introduced. Their deaths are not glorified or gruesomely depicted, as I may have expected from a horror novel, but are shown with compassion and the characters are given a dignity as the curtain draws on their lives.

I had originally believed Second Lives to be a horror tale but despite edging towards a supernatural slant it is not a gore-fest, monster mash, chilling tale of death and resurrection. It is a cleverly crafted, character driven story which raised some thought provoking moments.

Much of the enjoyment in Second Lives comes from reading about how the characters cope with the situation which they find themselves in. To have died and be ‘reborn’ into the body of a stranger. Not as a baby to grow and live anew but to drop into someone else’s life.  Sometimes the new life lives in a time period long after the deceased character originally lived so the body-shock issue is compounded by a radical lifestyle shift too. It can be overwhelming.

Second Lives was an opportunity to read a story vastly different from the “normal” thrillers I read. The premise is very clever and the execution equally so.

Second Lives is published by Flame Tree Press and is available to order here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Lives-Fiction-Without-Frontiers-ebook/dp/B07QCVBDRS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1555013420&sr=8-1-fkmrnull