Book Review: Merging the Drift by Tom Bray

For full disclosure, I was sent this book by the author. However, my views are all my own and as always completely honest. 

“How much do you know about your death?”
On the morning of his 18th birthday Ali woke up to his family home unusually silent, and deserted. He soon learns that he never lived the childhood he remembers and all his memories up until that point are fake. He is now alone, and an occupant of the Drift, an entity where deceased children coexist as their adult selves, with the ability to view a parallel version of their being in a separate, fictional world, without any influence or control over this life path.
Almost three years on, Ali has settled into a routine, but events from the real world he was taken from as a child begin to impact on the limits of his existence as he develops a strange connection with a fellow occupant seeking an unprecedented truth that surfaces a disturbing past and will forever bind together multiple souls.
Follow Ali and three others over the course of a mind-bending week as each seeks comfort and answers from their existence. 
Description taken from Amazon (Amazon link: Merging The Drift eBook: Bray, Tom: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store)
CW: Violence, Death, sexual abuse

What intrigued me most with this story was the concept. The question of what happens after death, what connection living people can have with the dead and what different "options" (spiritual, religious or otherwise) there are is super interesting to me and one I find myself drawn to in books. 
Tom Bray created this alternate world that reminded me of Neverland at first. A place where dead children would live out their lives without harm or pain. Obviously The Drift works a little different, with the added depth of "real" memories and constructed memories, the ability to shape it to your own liking and grow up.

The book is split into multiple points of views and while I loved the opportunity it gave us to explore The Drift and the "real" world from different perspectives, it was also confusing at times. Because we don't just deal with multiple people, there are also multiple (and yes, I have to put this in bold because I couldn't even count how many) points in time where things happen. It might be an understatement of me to say I was confused. Lost describes it better. That being said, the satisfaction I got out of all the strings intertwining and coming together was through the roof. There were so many questions I had at so many different points in the book. Do ghosts exist? Who is person X? Why does person X get their own point of view? Why did this person die? What is the connection between person X and person Y?
But Tom Bray manages to answer nearly all these question in a very satisfactory way and partly redeems himself for leaving me utterly lost in the middle of the book. I don't say this often, but the way everything came together at the end and connected was marvelous. 
Am I still slightly annoyed at the fact that this book made me feel slightly stupid for not figuring anything out 300 pages into it? Maybe. 

Aside from that I enjoyed Tom Bray's style of writing a lot (with the exception of a view scenes that made me feel a little weird and those weren't the violent ones) and actually laughed out loud at some of the witty remarks his characters made. The way he writes about hallucinations, pain and panic was brilliant and made my skin crawl, I guess in a good way? The emotion, the distress, was certainly there and well written. The slut shaming of women in clubs I could've done without, but maybe that was part of the character's unlikable attitude towards everyone around here. I don't know. 

Overall I gave this book a 3.5/5 because despite being confusing it was a gripping and creative story and if you stick it out I hope you'll find it as satisfying as I did. 
There are still a few minor questions that I have, but maybe I'll get answers to those in the sequel 'Closing The Drift' that is already planned. And even if not, I'm definitely planning on reading the sequel.

For now I hope you had a great week and I guess I'll see you again next Thursday, because as it seems, this is my blog day now. 

Take care, stay healthy and read on. 
Lena

Follow me and stay in touch:
Twitter: @lena_fiala
Instagram: @lena_fiala_
Business inquiries: lena.fiala99@gmail.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/95108873-lena-fiala