The Last Days Of Jack Sparks By Jason Arnopp

[amazon_link id=”0356506851″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’The Last Days Of Jack Sparks’ is the latest book by Jason Arnopp.

It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he’d already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed. Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.

I think it’s safe to say that ‘The Last Days Of Jack Sparks’ genuinely terrified and unsettled me from the very beginning to the final page. It was a book that gripped my attention and also one that I couldn’t wait to finish. It was also a book that I didn’t even want in the same room as me at nighttime, incase one of the terrifying characters would escape from the pages, so I found myself piling books on top of it, to contain its horror.

The story is primarily seen through the eyes of Jack Sparks, an egotistical character who is writing a book about the occult. He’s cynical towards it all and when he witnesses an exorcism, he maintains that it’s all a ploy from the Catholic church and with this attitude, his life begins to spiral out of control as he delves into the world of ghosts and exorcisms, as a mysterious video appears on his You Tube account that he knows nothing about and he becomes fixated on it, as he tries to find out the origin and story behind this perplexing video. Jack dies whilst researching this book and his brother Alistair finishes the story with the aid of people who met Jack on his writing journey.

As a writer for ‘Doctor Who’, I didn’t think this book was going to be easy reading, but nothing prepared me for the absolute fear that this book invoked in me. Cleverly the story is seen through the narrative of Jack, an obnoxious character who has a heavy social media presence and followers and is known for being outspoken and having an unorthodox way of approaching his method of research. As he slags off the supernatural, he finds himself victim of his own attitude after ridiculing a exorcism and is now haunted by a ghostly character with attitude. As the days pass and he delves further in the darker world of ghosts and ghouls, we see him begin to lose grip on reality and those around him notice a change in him, and they report a different sequence of events to what he reports. For this part, I thought it this was a genius part of the story, as it give the narrative a different slant that made for even more unsettling reading. One part that I particularly found quite scary was the video that randomly appeared in his You Tube account and then the chapters that followed describing the video were very intense and I found myself racing through them just to get it over with!

Written in a fast pace with an injection of humour as well as chilling terror, this book is creepy from the start with an original and funny narrative with quite an unlikable lead resulting in sad consequences and an underlying tense of doom and tension that makes the reader terrified. This story is genuinely heart stopping and compelling, with clever characters and situations that leaves the reader sleeping with the light on, ‘The Last Days Of Jack Sparks’ is a tragically cruel, terrifying and poignant story that made for uneasy reading.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0356506851″ target=”_blank” ]The Last Days of Jack Sparks [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.