Stitch

Stitch (Stitch Trilogy #1)

By Samantha Durante

4 out of 5

Synopsis
Her heart races, her muscles coil, and every impulse in Alessa's body screams at her to run... but yet she's powerless to move.

Still struggling to find her footing after the sudden death of her parents, the last thing college freshman Alessa has the strength to deal with is the inexplicable visceral pull drawing her to a handsome ghostly presence. In between grappling with exams and sorority soirees - and disturbing recurring dreams of being captive in a futuristic prison hell - Alessa is determined to unravel the mystery of the apparition who leaves her breathless. But the terrifying secret she uncovers will find her groping desperately through her nightmares for answers.

Because what Alessa hasn't figured out yet is that she's not really a student, the object of her obsession is no ghost, and her sneaking suspicions that something sinister is lurking behind the walls of her university's idyllic campus are only just scratching the surface...

The opening installment in a twist-laden trilogy, Stitch spans the genres of paranormal romance and dystopian sci-fi to explore the challenges of a society in transition, where morality, vision, and pragmatism collide leaving the average citizen to suffer the results.


Review
The story starts with torture and solitary confinement.

Then we suddenly wake up with Alessa, a perfectly normal young woman that is in her first year of college.  She might be a bit of a loner, withdrawn from the social hub that is her sorority house.  She spends her time revising and working on papers, and generally does well in all her tests.  Perhaps a little more unusual, is the fact that she keeps seeing a ghost of a boy.  These ghostly visits become an obsession as she digs into the history of this town to find out who he is.  Then the question arises - can Alessa save this boy and his family from his fate.
The story starts as a teen drama/paranormal romance, then it suddenly swings into the future dystopian genre as it is revealed that nothing is as it seems - Alessa is not who she seems, and even she does not know.  Her enemies have installed a "Stitch" in her mind, which cuts off certain memories, leaving them to be replaced with whatever her captors have designed.

I downloaded this for free from Amazon a while ago, and it sat on my kindle while I worked through my reading list.  When I got to this book, I had completely forgotten what it was about.  I had forgotten that it was supposed to be a dystopian story, and I enjoyed what I thought was a college story about a ghost and a mystery that needed solving.  So the twist of the story, that Alessa wasn't really a student, and the college is rigged with cameras and the setting for something much more sinister.

When Alessa starts to remember, and reality breaks through it was a bit of a scrabble to catch up and try and learn about the world that Durante has created.  It felt a little like two separate stories that were snapped together.  Both were good, but I'm looking forward to book 2, where I'm hoping we get to concentrate on the rebel movement in Paragon.

Goodreads link
Amazon.co.uk