Nemesis – Brendan Reichs

Nemesis

By: Brendan Reichs

Book #1 in Project Nemesis Series

Content Warnings: Violence, blood, death, trauma, bullying, mention of abuse, language

Book Review

When I read the synopsis for Nemesis I knew I had to pick it up immediately.

This novel tells the story of Min, a teenage girl who is murdered by the same mysterious man every two years on her birthday. After every death she wakes up in an abandoned field physically unharmed. What’s that all about? my mind kept asking me. Well, you can guess what happened next. I decided to ignore other books waiting for me to pick them up so I could get answers to my questions.

Nemesis doesn’t ease you into the mystery. It starts with the killer making his way towards Min. There’s no time for her to react. Yet what makes this horrible situation even worse for Min is that nobody believes what happens to her. And apparently Reichs decided that still wasn’t enough for his protagonist to deal with. There’s also the possibility of the world facing destruction from an asteroid within a short period of time.

Min spends most of her time thereafter revisiting her memories and investigating with best friend Tack. Some of the information they find leads them to Noah, one of their peers from high school. At this point Noah gets to share his POV for the second part of the book. I don’t want to give spoilers so I can’t say what about. Then the last parts alternate between Min and Noah. I enjoyed reading Min’s sections more because I liked her as a character. She makes a few big blunders, but is driven and stands for what she believes in. Noah is quite the opposite.

Speaking of this teen trio, I was happy Reichs maintained a solid friendship between Min and Tack. Their mutual support was one of my favorite aspects of the novel. What I didn’t enjoy was the forced romance between Min and Noah. There was little chemistry between them. What’s worse is Noah was apathetic to the bullying Min and Tack endured from other classmates, so I couldn’t understand why Min was ever attracted to him in the first place.

That aside, there are plenty of twists that pushed me deeper into the book and widened the scope of the plot. Nemesis is one of those novels that made me want to finish the story in one setting so I could unravel all the mysteries behind the escalating events. Then that ending teased my curiosity even further with some shocking reveals that are complete game changers for all involved.

More Musings & Magic

Do you like to solve a mystery before the big reveal, or do you just let yourself get immersed into the story and let everything play out for you? For the most part, I think I fall into the latter category.

Please keep the magic alive and share your comments below!