Jack Sparks died while writing this book.

It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he’d already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed.

Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.

Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed – until now.

This is one of those books where the blurbs are what caught my attention first. I hadn’t heard of Jason Arnopp when The Last Days of Jack Sparks was published, but the book had some serious buzz around it, and a handful of pretty spectacular blurbs:

“Wow. Seriously hard to put down.” –M. R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the Gifts

“Takes a frenetic and self-obsessed modern world in its confident stride… gives us ingenious and funny diabolism, repurposed for the 21st Century. A magnificent millennial nightmare.”― Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta

“This is one of those books where I’m sad when I’m not reading it. It manages the rare feat of being both horrific and hilarious, which makes me insanely jealous of Arnopp and has me considering how to kill him and consume his mighty power.”― Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author

I mean fuck…Wendig wants to kill Arnopp and consume his power. That’s…that’s a lot. So does The Last Days of Jack Sparks live up to such lofty blurbs? Oh, fuck yes. It does & then some. This book got its claws in me right away & never let go. The Last Days of Jack Sparks is easily one of the best & most wildly original horror novels I’ve ever read!

Jack Sparks is a British Internet personality/journalist/author. And…he’s dead. The novel is set up to be his last book, Jack Sparks on the Supernatural…the one he was working on when he died. It even comes with Jack’s occasional note to his editor, along with some footnotes from his brother & first-person accounts of some of the people Jack met along the way.

The less I say about this book, the better, because it is PACKED with surprises. But the style in which this is presented (with passages written by Jack in real time, followed by someone else’s version of events), we learn pretty quickly that Jack is a phenomenally unreliable narrator. He’s also selfish, arrogant & deeply cynical. His cynicism about all things supernatural runs deep. So deep that he openly mocks an exorcism that he witnesses, scoffing at it live on Twitter, to his many thousands of followers.

And that’s when the trouble starts.

What follows is a fucking manic romp to all corners of the world, as Jack tries to solve a creepy mystery while clinging desperately to his own sanity & sense of self.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks works well as so many different things. It uses elements of found footage horror, it features an absolutely amazing character arc, and it’s also fucking hilarious at times. Arnopp also takes a hard look at our obsession with social media, as Jack is a person who pretty much lives online.

Here’s a thing about me: I scare very easily, but mostly when it comes to horror movies as opposed to novels. I just find them to be two very different experiences. But this book? This book fucking terrified me. And of course, not in a jump-scare-in-a-movie kind of way. But there are scenes in this book that just filled me with such pure dread.

I really can’t recommend this enough. The Last Days of Jack Sparks is very cleverly written, completely unpredictable, and in many instances, utterly horrifying. What a fucking gem this book is.