The last book I read (which was very good) took me 16 weeks to get through. 
 This one arrived yesterday morning. My wife got her hands on it first and finished it by the evening. I took over and have finished it 8pm on the next day (today). It's not a short book, 460 pages of reasonably small font. It *is* a very compelling book. The opening is the strongest I've read in an age. 
 It's the first book I've bought in a long time. Publishers and authors send me free books in the hope I'll read them and say something nice, so I've a stack of books waiting that I didn't pay for. However, I only manage 10 or 12 books a year and once in a while it's nice to pick something myself. 
 A friend, whose tastes I trust, has recommended this book forcefully and frequently for a couple of years ... so I caved and got it. 
 It's the sort of story that's best come to cold. If someone spoils if for you it ... spoils it. It's not that the whole thing rests on some massive twist (I see dead people), just that it's so much nicer to experience it the way the author wanted you to, a slow reveal widening from claustrophobia to agoraphobia. 
 It's a book set in modern times, written in the present tense, and moving quite frequently from the main character's point of view to those of several others around her. The prose is of very high quality, powerful, direct descriptions that put you there, understated emotional scenes that drag you in, and violent action scenes that get the pulse racing. It's also clever and well structured enough to suspend what disbelief needs suspending. 
 I'm not going to say more than that other than, believe the hype, read it. 
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