A Thousand Natural Shocks

De: Omar Hussain

Narrado por: Ramiz Monsef

Named one of Murder & Mayhem’s Most Anticipated Mystery, Thriller, and Crime Books of 2025

Named a Goodreads Best Thriller & Mystery of 2025

Omar Hussain’s dazzling debut, A Thousand Natural Shocks, is a mesmerizing meditation on trauma, memory, and identity wrapped in a high-octane thriller.

Dash, a reporter in Monterey, California, is desperate to outrun his past. During the day, he investigates the reemergence of a long-dormant serial killer. At night, he has become entangled with a criminal cult that promises a pill to erase his traumatic memory.

But as Dash begins to lose his memories—and his sense of self—he discovers a dark secret about the cult, one that would horrify its members. And soon he finds himself in a race against time to evade the cult, unveil the killer, and reconcile his past before his own memories fade away ...

©2025 Omar Hussain (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

Thriller version of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

I found this book to be rather mediocre and dizzying as it weaves in and out of genres. First, a thriller, then fiction, followed by a murder mystery, all the while following what feels to be a cathartic replaying of his dad’s life and subsequent death—a story of death that dragged on quite awhile, removing me from the world of what was supposed to be an intense thriller, and into one that left me grieving with him.

Its plot is simple: a tormented soul looking to forget the past. It’s essentially the thriller version of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”.

While the author’s vivid and spectacular prose creates a visually stunning experience, it is often inconsistent. The disjointed narrative only exacerbates this issue.

The narration is nicely done aside from most of the female voices—which are annoyingly quiet and airy in pitch.

Many of these female characters lack substance and contribute nothing to the storyline to begin with—throwaway characters, in my opinion.

For example, the protagonist’s colleague who seems to be a love interest for a character who doesn’t come across as someone with much experience with women, likewise too broken a human to truly love another person. She is a one-dimensional and forgettable character, with no story arc who has no business taking up my time talking about her yoga classes and dressage lessons.

Similarly, a set of twins with no backstory is introduced, adding nothing to the plot and leaving their relevance and hatred for the protagonist unexplained. Despite these flaws, the author makes a bold choice with their storyline, which felt forced and phoned in.

And I won’t bore you with the dog storyline, but it had a very “I am Legend” vibe. Everyone loves dogs, but this was … silly.

Unfortunately, this is just a thriller that left me thinking about all the things I could have done in those eleven hours.