Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription I think this is one of those stories where it's best to go in blind and with an open mind, and simply sit down and enjoy the ride. The Space Between Us has so much to offer, and it's a perfect balance of different genres/elements and heavy topics with lighter moments and even banter. The writing itself is excellent (as always), and I really enjoyed how everything was wrapped up in the end. The Space Between Us is definitely one of my reading highlights so far this year! The story behind The Dead Beat - Online by Doug Johnstone". upcoming4.me. Archived from the original on 9 May 2014. A sci-fi novel that is as moving as it is magical and mysterious. Doug Johnstone has hit it out of the park again’ Mark Billingham One ordinary afternoon on the Edinburgh beach, a display of lights in the sky, the stranding of a mysterious squid and a series of unexplained strokes suffered by bystanders connect the lives of our three protagonists. Lennox is a teenage boy struggling with his identity and feeling like he doesn’t belong. Ava is heavily pregnant and on the run from an abusive relationship, in search of a new place to call home. Heather has lost all hope of ever finding that feeling of home again, after losing her daughter to cancer, and now suffering a terminal diagnosis herself as well.

Speaking off the alien visitor: “Sandy”, as they call, is one of my favourite types of literary alien. The closest comparison, again, is the Arrival-aliens; sentient enough to communicate, but so completely alien that their comprehension of some concepts is so different from our human ones. In this case, those concepts being “connection”, rather than time in the case of Arrival-. The implications that has on communication, understanding and even the way we view ourselves is wonderfully explored here. What Doug does well is characters. Whether it’s a teenager coerced into a life of crime, a woman in fear of her abusive husband or a drum playing grandmother in her 70s, he creates people that are real and relatable. He certainly did it again in this book and he’s so good that he even had me empathising with an alien octopus in this book – some talent!

High stakes, high adrenaline and somehow so gentle and moving. This is one of the most beautiful, extraordinary books I've ever read' During that night, a creature resembling an octopus (but not exactly an octopus as it possesses five tentacles instead of eight) washes up on the beach in East Lothian. These three are special for reasons they don’t understand, and they are drawn to a strange octopus-like creature on a beach outside Edinburgh, where the meteor was seen crashing into the sea. To save its life, they have to go on a road-trip across the Scottish Highlands, dark forces chasing after them all the way. I jokingly told my publisher the elevator pitch: ‘ ET meets Thelma and Louise’. But there’s a kernel of truth in that. I enjoyed this book! The writing was solid, easy to get through. I really liked Sandy and the other characters in this book. There was mystery, action and different POVs, which I all enjoyed.

Doug Johnstone (born 22 July 1970) is a Scottish crime writer based in Edinburgh. His ninth novel Fault Lines was published by Orenda Books in May 2018. [1] His 2015 book The Jump (published by Faber & Faber) was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Novel. [2] For a long time I’ve hankered to write science fiction. I’ve had a folder in my desk drawer for years with science fiction ideas, or at least ideas that wouldn’t fit into the crime fiction mould. I never felt I could make that shift, but my attitude to that changed after my stroke. It’s a cliché, of course, whenever anyone has a life-threatening event, that they come out the other side changed, seeking to grasp every moment, appreciate life more intensely, smell the flowers and all that. But there is an element of truth to it all the same. I felt suddenly less inhibited in my writing. Remember, this was during the early days of the pandemic, too. If anyone could die at any moment, myself included, why not write whatever the hell I wanted? A gloriously hopeful story and a perfect road trip movie just waiting to be made ... I can't recommend this highly enough' James OswaldEwan is a journalist. He senses a big story behind this occurrence and is baffled by why these three should be stonewalling his questions. But the more he learns, the more he feels a connection to these people and to Sandy. There’s lots of great stuff going on in this book. Firstly, it’s effortless reading; I inhaled the book over a couple of days. The story of each character in the book is extremely compelling. Every chapter is filled with hooks that keep you reading, long after you should have put the book down and gone to sleep, done some work, or fed the kids. I am always excited and delighted to be given a place on an Orenda Books blog tour as they are always in high demand and the tour for The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone is no exception. So I owe gratitude to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for offering me one of the coveted places and to the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of the book for the purpose or review. I have reviewed the book honestly and impartially.

As they criss-cross the Scottish landscape, they are faced with multiple dangers. Ava is heavily pregnant with an abusive husband on her tail, Heather is carrying a terminal diagnosis and Lennox is a lost boy without any clear purpose in life until now. A motley crew, they call on anyone they can to help them on this insane journey and start to make discoveries about themselves, each other and about an alien creature looking to find home. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions over the last decade, and has been an arts journalist for over twenty years. Lennox, Ava, and Heather feel a pull towards the creature, which Lennox names Sandy. They need to get to them to help them… The Space Between Us works on so many levels. It is full of humanity. I suppose technically it is sci-fi, but it is also so much more. Doug excels in looking at the human race in relation to the rest of the universe, giving a real sense of perspective as to who we are and how our actions impact on each other, as well as making us think about how we treat each other.This book is taking an epic tour around some of the best book blogs there are so please do visit some of them and see what they have to say about the novel: But they aren’t the only ones with an interest in the alien … close behind are Ava’s husband, the police and a government unit who wants to capture the creature, at all costs. And Sandy’s arrival may have implications beyond anything anyone could imagine… Set in Edinburgh, The Space Between Us is the story of three people who become connected in the most bizarre fashion. Lennox, Ava and Heather are all facing challenges in their lives that appear to be insurmountable. On the same evening, all three are in the midst of possible life-changing events when they sense something in the air and see an extraordinary scene in the skies above them. The next all three know is that they wake up in a hospital ward, all having suffered a stroke, but all now remarkably unaffected and fully recovered. Many others are left affected by this strange phenomenon but for Lennox, Ava and Heather, life is going to get very very strange. I can see this book being adapted for the screen. There’s a definite filmic vibe to it and the road trip across Scotland would definitely lend itself well.

This had all the makings of a film … such relatable characters. Writing a story about a mixed-race boy in the care system and two women so brilliantly is so impressive’ Sunetra Sarker on Between the Covers So yes the book does involve an extra terrestrial octopus. However on a lot of levels it’s not really about that at all and Sandy, the octopus, serves as an analogy as to how we treat those who we perceive to be different from ourselves. Definite parallel with the current political climate! It’s also about loneliness but human connection too and how strangers can help us and even become lifesavers if we just dare to let them in.Coercively-controlled Ava, bullied schoolboy Lennox and terminally ill Heather don’t have their troubles to seek already when something strange happens to unite them one night just outside Edinburgh, in this week’s Star Read.