Fast-paced and entertaining. A recommended purchase for collections where crime and thrillers are popular.

Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed this syfy suspense novel. The author keeps us intrigued with well developed characters and an interesting plot. I liked that there wasn't a lot of medical terminology and the story was easy to follow.

A darkly twisted, science fiction type read. Have you ever thought there could be a second chance? A do over? Chrissi didn't think so but here she was and she thought it was a coincidence but is it? When an already grief stricken Chrissi gets an offer to fix the future of three people but has to substitute a person in the place of whom she saves. How could she go along with this and who does she choose. Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the advance ecopy.

I've been a fan of this author for a while and was exited to be approved for The Substitute. I was reminded of Flowers for Algernon and Fire Starter (two of my all time favourite books) at the beginning of the story which really helped me get into it.

Imagine you could guarantee the safety of three of your closest family/friends but in return you earmark three substitutes to die in their place...what would you do? This is the choice given to Chrissie by a mysterious stranger, she is no stranger to heartbreak so it doesn't take much soul searching until she makes her decision....

Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Recommend to any science fiction thriller lovers!

Wow, what a deliciously dark, twisted rice! Well written, intense, and unputdownable! Written in a fast paced and fantastic way. While not really realistic, I enjoyed it greatly! I absolutely love dark books, so if you don’t, this one may not be for you! Highly, highly recommend!

This reminds me of that short story where the couple answers the door and there's a box with a button and if they push the button, someone dies.....etc etc.

Except...better?

While there are similar books/movies/stories on the market, this manages to take this to a sci-fi, almost Black Mirror level. I loved it. It's truly a moral question at the end of the day.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Be careful what you wish for. What would you do to guarantee the safety of your loved ones? A bit odd, a bit out there, but it was really good. I enjoyed Substitute. Thought provoking, a bit dark at times. A good story and great writing. I'm going to check out more from her

What if you could save your loved ones from dying? We all wish we could have a magic button that would automatically save the people we love. In Susi Holliday’s new novel, Substitute, she explores just that, and it is a thoroughly entertaining, clever story. But it isn’t quite as straightforward as just saving someone you love. For you to save them, you must choose someone to die in their place.

Substitute is a highly engaging thriller which blends with science fiction so well. We meet Chrissie, who is still grieving for her mother who died several years earlier. Although her husband can’t seem to understand why she is still getting upset. She is approached by a stranger who asks if she would like to take part in a new programme. She doesn’t take this proposition all that seriously at first and eventually signs up, thinking it’s all just hypothetical. But it becomes clear that Chrissie wasn’t just randomly selected to take part. There is something far darker going on behind the scenes here.

Susi Holliday’s premise is such an interesting one. It had me thinking, what would I do if I was in Chrissie’s position. Would I be able to decide who lives and who dies so I can protect the ones I love? It did make me wonder if perhaps there is something similar in development somewhere around the world and that thought gave me chills. Given everything that’s happened in the past year, it doesn’t seem quite outside the realms of possibility anymore.

I loved the two different strands in this story. As we meet Chrissie in the present, we are also taken back to 1980 where we meet two scientists, Edward, and Michael. They are in the process of developing something extraordinary which Michael believes will benefit the world hugely.

I loved how Susi Holliday gradually revealed more about her characters and I could begin to see why they were involved in what was happening here. It is so cleverly put together. There are some tense scenes as we begin to understand why Chrissie has been selected to take part in this programme. It made for such gripping reading and the last line right at the end gave me chills.

This if my favourite book by Susi to date and I flew through it. If you love a mix of science fiction and a psychological thriller then this is the book for you. I highly, highly recommend it!

When I read the blurb for this book I was really intrigued by the premise of the story and the moral questions it might throw up. You can choose to save 3 people but you must choose 3 others to take their place. Who would you choose and is there ever a right choice?

The story is quite slow moving and nothing really happens until well over half way through the book. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not but I didn’t like any of the characters in this book which is unusual for me.

Without giving spoilers away, I personally found a lot of it predictable and slightly lacklustre. It was such an amazing premise but the execution did not follow through.

It also ends abruptly with a contrived Happy Ever After which is not something you see in many thrillers.

Having said all that, I did enjoy reading it and it was easy to read, I just wanted more. More depth, more story, more character development.

Thank you to Netgalley and Amazon Publishing for the advanced reader’s copy.

This was a really great sci-fi mystery. The jumping across POVs over different time periods, but it all tied together perfectly in the end. It was suspenseful and mysterious in all the right ways.

I really enjoyed the Substitute!! What a creepy and intriguing premise. I’m a huge fan of short chapters too. This one kept me interested through each and every page. Def my type of read!! I’ll def be checking into some others by this author.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this one.

In the Substitute, Chrissie Tate is a wife to Michael and a mother to their three-year-old, Holly. She is also a drama queen. Chrissie’s marriage is happy. But she can’t stop grieving for her dead mother. Even though years have passed. She frantically worries about protecting her young daughter—from falls, and from her neighbors. So, when a stranger comes to her door with a strange proposal, she eventually invites him in.

“Tell me, Mrs. Tate have you ever experienced grief? What if I could ensure that you never had to experience that again, Mrs. Tate? Would that be something that might interest you?“

The stranger, named Joseph, claims he works for the government. Chrissie quickly names three people who she wants to save from death. She chooses Holly, Michael, and her best friend, Wendy. Then, Joseph reveals the catch.

“If you want to prevent the death of your loved ones, then you need to select the people you want to die instead.“

In a parallel plot set in 1980, Michael has found a virus that can reanimate recently dead mice. The time the mice live again is short—only days in 1980. But how would the virus act forty years later when Chrissie was visited by Joseph?

It is an interesting idea to mix a Michael Crichton-type medical thriller with a domestic suspense plot. Science going horribly wrong hasn’t really been popular for decades. And, that part of the book is my favorite part.

I’m bored with the “family with secrets” thriller style that has been so popular the past few years. Chrissie’s full-blown panic, PTSD, and epic worrying are not supported with either rational underpinnings or a mental health issue. She’s just annoying.

That said, the Substitute does have an intriguing plot. It makes you wonder what you would do if Joseph stopped by your house one evening. 4 stars!

Thanks to Amazon Publishing UK and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to the author, Amazon Publishing UK and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The premise sounded intriguing, dark and twisty - unfortunately the execution did not live up to the premise. Telling the story through varying POVs worked well, although the twist was clear to me fairly early on. Nevertheless, the build-up was well-done. However, the book is one cliché after another, the characters are one-dimensional at best and I found it impossibly pat.

ⒷⓄⓄⓀ ⓇⒺⓋⒾⒺⓌ
Substitute
Author: Susi Holliday
Genre: Mystery and Thriller, General fiction
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you Amazon Publishing UK for sending me an ARC of this book.

What if you never had to feel grief? How would life be?

In the story, we see Crissie or Christina fighting with her mental trauma, trying to create a loving family and caring for her daughter. Suddenly a person comes to her with a choice of never having to feel grief again. She just has to give him the three names of people who matters the most to her. And three substitutes for them. Christina, losing her mother at an early age, takes a relevantly smaller time to give her answer, and the story starts rolling from there.

The overall storyline is good, really good in fact. Throughout the story, the plot detangles smoothly and the cliffhanger leaves you wanting more. However, I found the starting part of the story a little dragging. The mystery started after 30% of the book was over. Although those small details in the beginning of the story makes sense in the later part of the story.

You will like this book if medical thrillers are your thing, and you are up for some drama. The story does not let you feel disappointed, so I think this is worth a try.

This moves back and forth in time between the 1980s, when a pair of mad scientists come up with an amazing discovery, and the present, when Chrissy is presented with a choice that seems easy on the surface. It's somewhere between sci-fi and thriller (duh) leaning more heavily to the latter. I know others have really enjoyed this but it felt trope-y to me and I wasn't invested in the characters. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

As usual with Susi Holliday books, this was a fast paced exciting thriller. Also as usual with Susi Holliday books, the plot doesn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny. In this case, the science was a complete nonsense, but the book was enjoyable enough that I didn’t mind too much.

A recommended beach read - remember to leave your brain at home!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

This is a futuristic thriller telling the story of a mother willing to take a highly unusual step in order to keep her child safe, which in turn leads to unpredictable circumstances. A great and original read!

What would you do to protect the ones you love? Could you sacrifice someone you know to keep your loved one alive? That is the question for Chrissie. A strange man comes to her door promising that she never need to experience grief or loss again. What's the catch? Pick three of your closest family or friends you never want to lose and you won't, you just have to give the names of three people to die in their place. As life goes on after this conversation, Chrissie begins to see some of this put into action - is it coincidence or could this possibly be happening? Past and present times collide to bring this story full circle. Great read!

What if you could prevent your three most loved people from dying, but you had to choose substitutes to take their place? When Chrissie is offered this deal, she thinks someone is playing a prank on her. That is until one of her three chosen loved ones is in an accident. They survive, but her substitute does not.

Scientist, Michael, has been working on a cell regenerating drug in the hope he can cure cancer. His lab partner sees a different path though - what if they could cure death?

Told in alternating points of view and time, Chrissie in the current day and Michael years earlier, The Substitute is a suspenseful morality thriller that leaves you asking ‘what would I do?’  I enjoyed the slow reveal of Chrissie’s past that connected the dots as the story progressed.

With plenty of twists and tense moments, I was engrossed in this one from the start. This was my first book by this author, but I’ll be checking out some of her others shortly!