Ian Chorão: "When We Talk to the Dead" (ARC Review)

Title: When We Talk to the Dead [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Ian Chorão [Instagram | Goodreads]
Genres: Thriller/Mystery, Supernatural (more like Paranormal, but I'm using genre labels that match my Reading Rooms, where Paranormal is under the Supernatural umbrella)
Year: 2025
Age: 16+ (please have a look at the WARNING! section though)
Stars: 4/5
Pros: Haunting, tense, almost lyrical at times (horror notwithstanding), with diverse, fleshed out characters and intriguing dynamics.
Cons: A couple of major plot points (not of the supernatural/paranormal kind) require a strong dose of suspension of disbelief. The open ending may not sit well with certain readers.
WARNING! Violence/assault (not of the sexual kind), horror/blood and gore (I can't be too specific in order to avoid spoiler, but TW for drowning). Anxiety, intrusive thoughts, trauma, loss of a sibling, loss of a parent, mentally ill parent. Use of a derogatory term.
Will appeal to: Those who are looking for a blend of very real and psychological horror with a twist. Those who are fond of damaged, yet brave characters and complicated relationships.

Blurb: Though nineteen-year-old Sally remembers nothing about the accident that took place on Captain’s Island and destroyed her family when she was a little girl, she suffers from intense anxiety, pervasive bouts of dissociation, and gruesome nightmares. All Sally knows is that her mother hasn’t spoken since the accident that took the life of Sally’s twin sister. Following the tragedy, her family fled and never looked back. When her mother suddenly dies, Sally and three college friends travel to the island - for her friends it’s an adventure to a strange, abandoned place. For Sally, it’s a desperate bid to recover some of her memories and understand what really happened to her family. But when memories begin to return, Sally is overcome by grief and rage that threaten to plunge her into madness – a madness that is fed by a malevolent presence stalking them on the island. (Amazon excerpt)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

GHOST IMAGE

When We Talk to the Dead turned out to be a different novel than I'd envisioned - mind you that's not a bad thing at all, but I want you to have a better idea of what you're getting into if you decide to give it a chance (which you totally should 😉), so I thought I'd give you a heads-up. With very little help from the cryptic cover (though, after reading the book, I realised it was a good fit), and nothing else to go by than the blurb and the title, I thought I was in for a ghost story...which I suppose can be deemed true in a sense, but not the one you would imagine. OK, now it's me who's being cryptic, but I don't want to spoil the book for you either...Suffice to say, there aren't any ghosts in this story...not in the classic sense. But if you think of memories and trauma and lost loved ones and the child you used to be as ghosts, I suppose there are plenty...

PERFECT ALCHEMY

This is a book that requires a little patience, so if you're the kind of reader that needs unrelenting action, it might not be a good fit. Chorão takes his sweet time with the characters - four 19 y.o. friends and a boy of the same age, who accompanies them to the abandoned island where one of them used to live - the background and the setting, slowly building up atmosphere and a sense of foreboding...but that's not to say that the story doesn't hit hard, because oh, things get brutal eventually, leading to an explosive final confrontation with the presence on the island. Both fans of slasher and psychological horror will recognise tropes of the genres, but a few twists and red herrings (in a manner of speaking), along with the personal touch Chorão infuses into such tropes, keep things fresh and unpredictable enough until the end - though I have to admit that the epilogue didn't come as a surprise for me. As for the characters, most of them are diverse - the protagonist Sally is Chilean/Portuguese, her friend Omisha is Indian, Omisha's boyfriend Marcus is Black and non-binary (though he's said to mostly use he/him pronouns, and he's always referred to as he/him in the narrative), Maeve is a lesbian - complex and/or in complex relationships with one another, struggling with their heritage or their mental health (Sally in particular has anxiety and intrusive thoughts for which she sees a therapist - though she mostly deals with them by shooting candid, yet artsy videos for her YouTube channel, which was a nice touch). But the thing that stands out more is the writing, simple yet evocative, a present-tense third-person style that complements the story at its best (while I think that the previous first-person version, whose remnants can be found a couple of times in the ARC, wouldn't have worked as effectively).

UNLIKELY SCENARIOS

Now, where the story falters is in the suspension of disbelief it requires for a couple of pivotal events that set it in motion. I can't be too specific (heck, I can't be specific at all, because that would result in a giant spoiler), but I can't believe that Sally's parents didn't look more closely into the accident that befell her twin sister, and that they flew the island shortly afterwards; likewise, I found the aftermath of that accident to be highly improbable (again, I can't elaborate...). But having swallowed that premise, I enjoyed both the story and the execution, and even the somehow open ending. If you can believe six impossible things before breakfast, and are a fan of family drama/trauma, choral narratives, and brutal, yet dreamlike mysteries with a pinch of the supernatural/paranormal, WWTTTD will most definitely scratch that itch for you. 

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