A Mask of Flies

A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons

This book was hella WEIRD!!!

Someone sold them out. The heist went terribly wrong and Anne barely escapes with Jessup bleeding so badly that the only place she can stop is the place where she lost her mother. He doesn't survive his gunshot but apparently doesn't know how to stay dead either...

The supernatural themes in this one were really exciting!! Anne is a criminal and remembers virtually nothing from her childhood. She remembers what happened to her mother but no one believed her. She was on the verge of being annoying but she always starts to redeem herself so it was hard to hate her but she was such a hot head. Quick to anger and that really was irritating.

She ends up going back to the cabin where her mother was killed and in doing so lets something loose. She can't outrun it and on her journeys she learns about why she doesn't remember anything from her childhood. It's eerie and dark and really entertaining.

For the most part it was well paced but there was a lot I person think should have been cut out and then it would have been one hell of a book.

4 stars

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the audio ARC! Saskia Maarleveld did a great job and brought the story to life, giving the character voice kind of a Poker Face, Natasha Lyonne vibe.

After a traumatic experience as a child, in which she and her mother were forced to flee their little cabin, Anne turned to a life of crime to make ends meet. Always the professional, Anne had so far gotten away scot-free, only agreeing to one final score. However, after a bank robbery gone wrong, she may be forced back into things she’d been running from all her life.

This was a really unique blend of crime and supernatural. It really does feel like bits of It Follows, The Evil Dead, and even Smile meshed together with a criminal on the run. As Anne dodged police and public recognition, there is something eerie and slithering following her all throughout the background.

With an almost whiplash pacing, I thoroughly enjoyed the twists and turns in this one, only wondering how things would pan out when the climax seemed to happen too soon (it doesn’t). And of course with such a pace, it does go a bit too fast for the eerie suspense to build up, however the scenes the entity appears in were incredibly creepy, particularly the police station scene.

The only thing that stuck out for me was the police officer as a side character. Anne specifically shoots his partner in the knee, injuring him, but stating several times she did not kill him. But then the kidnapped officer says that no one will believe him that he wasn’t involved and therefore he decides to help her? It just seemed odd to me a kind of a really weak reason for him to be there. Although I did enjoy Anne being multilayered and pulling almost everyone that meets her into her orbit because she wasn’t wholly bad.

Overall, this is a very good one!