It’s a pleasure to be sharing my review today for The Identity Thief, book 1 in The God Machine series by Alex Bryant as part of the blog tour thanks to Kelly at Love Books Tours.
About the book
Spoiler alert: no.
Reasons to buy this book:
✔ Good cover.
✔ Cheap. Seriously, the Kindle version only costs as much as about 3 mangoes. What would you rather have – 10 hours of gripping urban fantasy, or 30 minutes of biting into sweet, succulent mango flesh?
✔ OK, I shouldn’t have used mango, objectively the best fruit, as a comparison. But buying this book doesn’t stop you from buying mangoes, if that’s what you insist on doing.
The Identity Thief is available to purchase now – Amazon
My thoughts
The cover of this book is what drew me to it, I know you should never judge a book by its cover but I totally do and I’m not ashamed to admit it. This is the sort of cover that would jump out at me if i was browsing and when I read the description I knew I had to read it.
From page one I was hooked and I have to admit that this is going to be a difficult review to write as I really don’t want to give away any spoilers but I have so much I want to say.
Set in London where magic is common but forbidden we meet 12 year old Cassandra Drake, daughter of DCI Helen Drake who is in charge of hunting down the notorious and dangerous sorcerer Cuttlefish. Cass is your typical 12 year old, so when Hector a Greek, geeky boy shows an interest in her she’s mortified and even more so when her mum suggests they play the friendly neighbours and visit Hector and his Mother Foni.
Cuttlefish is creating havoc, causing magical deaths and the SID team have no idea where or who it is. Being able to transform magically into any person makes things very difficult for them to be caught but why has Cuttlefish returned after 10 years, he was supposedly shot and dead?
The Identity Thief is one fully loaded story that honestly had me hooked. The characters come to life and although I didn’t particularly love Cass she was real and I could sort of understand her thinking at some points. I mean it’s been a long time since I was 12 but I remember wanting to fit in and not do anything to embarrass myself. Hector on the other hand I did feel sorry for, he’s different, quiet and a bit geeky and having just moved to a new school finds it difficult to adjust.
As the story unfolds we get know more about the characters backgrounds and I couldn’t read fast enough. Cuttlefish could be any one of the characters and each time I thought I was getting close to finding out who it was I was taken in a different direction and had to re-think things. I mean how the heck do you capture someone who can transform into anyone, make you believe you could be speaking to your neighbour, your teacher or even your mother? Oh it had me bewildered and totally addicted.
The Identity Thief is very cleverly written, nothing is quite straight forward but it’s not confusing either if that makes sense. The story flows well and with added news paper articles and blog posts, it gave it that little bit more, it just added a little bit extra to the story and I really enjoyed it.
I could probably go on and on about this book but I won’t in the hope that you’ll go get a copy yourself and see what a brilliant story this is. It’s full to the brim, it’s a story that grabs you from the first page and keeps you completely hooked until the end. I’ve not read that many fantasy books but this one is definitely unique and I am super excited for the next instalment. Highly recommended by me.
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About the author
It's all about the books 