Recluse, by Gabriel Zavala

Six stars

First and foremost, a large thank you to BookSirens and Gabriel Zavala for providing me with a copy of this publication, which allows me to provide you with an unbiased review.

New to the world of Gabriel Zavala, I gladly accepted this ARC. I always enjoy a good thriller and this piece had all the needed elements to be impactful. Zavala presents. the story of a reclusive young man whose past has been anything but calm. Living in a town where freedom is secondary to security, Lukas Retter finds himself trying to piece his life together. His issue? He has a penchant for murder and presents his victims in a shocking manner, stymying the police and those who come upon the victims. As the race to find the killer heats up, Retter remains in the shadows, waiting to strike once more, as calm as a spider. An intriguing piece by Zavala, which will have the reader questing everything they know.

Lukas Retter has been a resident of East Haddam, Connecticut for a number of years. A correctional city, East Haddam is part of the plan under the Safety First Act, a law that tries to keep crime on the down low and providing safety for the larger population. For now, Retter will live reclusively and work at a car wash, dreaming about how he can shed himself of this life and the boredom that follows.

Retter thinks back on his youth, when he was locked away in a psychiatric hospital for a crime he says that he never committed. He was analysed and left to answer countless questions, in hopes that he would help share how his mind might be wired and what led him to commit such a horrible act. This stewing has led Lukas Retter to resent the world and the town in which he has been placed to protect others. He ends up killing his girlfriend, Rebecca Waylow, in an effort to keep his secret quiet, but also to challenge the authorities who are trying to keep the peace. By dismembering Rebecca’s body and stringing her up, Retter goads the authorities to find him, while replicating the spiders he watched in his youth.

Hoping to take his life back, Retter begins killing with more frequency and leaving his victims in a web, dangling and dismembered. He pushes to see if anyone will notice and turn to him, while denying his role in anything as a local detective tries to piece it all together. The Safety First Act has been able to keep the majority of the population sated, but there will surely be come who cannot be controlled, Lukas Retter might be one, but he will not simply bow down and wait. He will have to be caught, though he is ready, his web prepped to catch yet another victim. Zavala shows his abilities with this one in a great story that has much potential.

I tend to have high hopes of books with strong summaries, though without context for the author, I can only hope things will go well during the reading process. Gabriel Zavala presents what could be stunning novel, but stumbles coming out of the gate. The opening chapters work, but they do not paint the needed impact I hoped to find, pulling me in and taking control of my reading experience. One might say that I wanted to get stuck in the web of this story and not being able to experience this left me feeling empty. I did enjoy things and Zavala delivers some of the key points, but there was a lack of electrical sensation that this piece might have had. The balance between past and present is found in the story, offering up some backstory for Lukas Retter, but there is no jaw-dropping moment at any point. The narrative flows and pushes along, but I was not shocked or left needing to keep flipping pages in order to get to the end. I hoped for more and yet somehow made it through the book.

There were moments of decent character development throughout the novel, providing the reader with context in this story. While nothing stellar, Zavala does paint a collection of central characters in order to make things come together. They flavour the narrative in ways needed to add depth to a story that did not have as much as I hoped. While I did not connect with the characters, I can see what Zavala was doing and am pleased to see he took time to create them to keep the story moving.

Plot development was there, at least on some level. Zavala delivers some surprise in the narrative and provides moments of tension onto which the reader can build a curiosity. I was pleased to see how well things moved in the book, oscillating between past and present, though I had hoped for more and sought something that left me begging for more. Zavala made a decent effort, but one cannot rely on a desire to like something. I had higher hopes and trust others will enter this reading experience with eyes opened and expectations in reserve.

Kudos, Mr. Zavala, for planting some decent ideas. While I do not feel they flourished as much as they ought to , there was a foundation on which to build things.