Hello and welcome to my stop of the Deity Random Things Tours blog tour! A huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me to be part of this blog tour. The Six Stories series is easily one of my all time favorite series so of course I jumped at the chance to join the blog tour for book number five. And guess what? It ended up being yet another story that blew me away completely! Want to know why? Please join me while I share my thoughts…

Title: Deity
(Six Stories #5)
Author: Matt Wesolowski
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
First published: December 18th 2020
Publisher: Orenda Books
Finished reading: January 16th 2021
Pages: 320

“When you take the paths I take with Six Stories, monsters are what you should expect to meet.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

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Speechless. Flabbergasted. Mindblown. Oh yes, Matt Wesolowski has done it again and delivered us another absolute masterpiece. I was left without words and simply unable to put a proper sentence on paper that would actually do this story justice… Exactly what I already feared after my experience with the previous books of the series, but the journey Deity takes us on is absolutely worth the suffering of that ‘unworthy book blogger‘ feeling afterwards. I’m tempted to throw in the phrase ‘just buy the damn book‘ and leave it at that, as this would be a valid conclusion of my thoughts in the first place, but let’s see if I’m able to delve a bit deeper into what is already Six Stories success number five.

The first thing that stands out is the setting in Scotland, and especially the Colliecrith National Park and the vast and daunting lands of the main character Zack Crystal himself called Crystal Forest. The descriptions give the setting an eerie and dangerous vibe, with hints at the supernatural along the way. I LOVED the incorporation of the Scottish folklore with the Frithghast element and the history it was based on… The rumors and past events adding a healthy dose of creepiness to the whole story.

The podcast element is once again spot on, but that’s what I’ve already come to expect of this series. Deity has once again six podcast episodes where different people will give their opinion about Zack Crystal, his past and the circumstances around his death. The different POVs will help shine a light on the pop megastar, all the while with our beloved journalist Scott King trying to remain neutral. As always, I really liked the way Scott King interviews his guests and is somehow always able to unearth new facts and slowly discover the truth about it all. The regular podcast episodes are also mixed with other formats including parts of an exclusive interview with Zack Crystal, parts of a pro-Crystal blog by one of his fans and the BBC news. This mix of different formats turns Deity into a multi-dimentional and unique read and is part of the same Six Stories formula I simply can’t get enough of.

I loved the focus on music in general in Deity. We have the main character Zack Crystal of course, who is a pop megastar with an interesting history and some shady rumors and accusations as well as a mysterious disappearance and death… Talk about a fascinating character to build your story around! It’s the myth of the superstar, bringing questions about superfans and how their hero cannot do wrong even if evidence of the contrary starts popping up… And how far they are willing to go to protect their idol. Fangirling to the extreme indeed! I could also particularly appreciate the references to Skexxixx and book number two Hydra, as it brought back great memories of that story while also adding something new and all important to this particular case. Minor spoilers for book two could appear, so you’ve been warned if you haven’t read it yet.

As for the characters… I’ve been a fan of Scott King since the very first book, and especially the way he interviews and him trying to be neutral and just presenting the stories as told by his guests on his podcast. The rest of the characters come from a diverse background and each one adds both intrigue and new angles to the story.  Your perspective and feelings about certain characters will change over time as you learn more about them, and Deity will have more than one twist and secret in store for you. I was basically on the edge of my seat until the very end, devouring each page along the way as I was simply unable to stop reading. There is just something about Matt Wesolowski‘s writing that draws you right in, mesmerizes you and doesn’t let you go… And that ending!

In short, Deity turned out to be another absolutely fantastic addition to the Six Stories series and I bow once again to the podcast thriller master. Say hello to what I already know will be one of my 2021 favorites!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-based anthologies, such as Midnight Movie Creature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, and film rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio. A prequel, Hydra, was published in 2018 and became an international bestseller. Changeling, the third book in the series, was published in 2019 and was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. His fourth book, Beast, won the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Independent Voice
Book of the Year award in 2020.

You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram. Bloglovin’.