On my blog today, I’m sharing my thoughts on the new thriller by Sarah Sultoon, The Shot as part of the blog tour. With thanks to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part.
BLURB
Samira is an up-and-coming TV journalist, working the nightshift at a major news channel and yearning for greater things. So when she’s offered a trip to the Middle East, with Kris, the station’s brilliant but impetuous star photographer, she leaps at the chance
In the field together, Sami and Kris feel invincible, shining a light into the darkest of corners … except the newsroom, and the rest of the world, doesn’t seem to care as much as they do. Until Kris takes the photograph.
With a single image of young Sudanese mother, injured in a raid on her camp, Sami and the genocide in Darfur are catapulted into the limelight. But everything is not as it seems, and the shots taken by Kris reveal something deeper and much darker … something that puts not only their careers but their lives in mortal danger.
Sarah Sultoon brings all her experience as a CNN news executive to bear on this shocking, searingly authentic thriller, which asks immense questions about the world we live in. You’ll never look at a news report in the same way again…
MY THOUGHTS
I really enjoyed Sarah Sultoon’s debut novel, The Source, so I was excited to read her next book The Shot. This time Sarah focuses on journalists covering a devastating war in the Middle East. It is a very powerful read and the action gets going from the first page and it never lets up.
I loved the sense of place that Sarah Sultoon created in this novel. She manages to re-create the horror of war in her writing, especially for the innocent, who are caught up in a crisis that is not of their making. It made me feel as though I was there in the moment, and I could see the scenery so clearly around me as I was reading. It makes for heart breaking reading in places, especially with what is going on in the world today, with the war happening in Ukraine. Her novel also highlights the dangers that journalists put themselves in to bring the truth to millions around the world, and we can see this clearly in news reports today.
I really grew to like our main protagonist, Sami, who is just starting out in her career in journalism. You can see that she is determined to make her mark, and I could really see her empathy for the people who were caught up in the conflict she was reporting on. This isn’t just a job to her. She can see what people are going through every day of their life and the emotion comes through strongly on the page. She is also desperate to bring stories to the world, which has been given little air time, and she wants to make individual stories of people affected by these atrocities heard. But there is one story in particular that she wants to tell to the world, but it will end up having devastating consequences in ways she couldn’t have imagined.
We also meet Kris, who Sami has travelled to the Middle East with to report on the war. Kris has a lot more experience than Sami in the field of journalism, but I found him more difficult to like and a more perplexing character. I had more questions about him as I was reading the book. I thought he was a really interesting character to see develop. It does feel that he is running from something, and I felt sorry for his family who he is always leaving behind in the UK, in pursuit of following what he wants to do with his life. I wanted to find out more about him and what was making him make this decision. It did make me wonder why he wanted to keep returning war torn countries when he could be out of the danger zone with his family back home.
The Shot is an engaging, powerful and a very relevant thriller that I was utterly gripped by. I highly recommend it.
Publisher: Orenda Books
Publication date: 2nd April 2022
Print length: 290 pages
The Shot is available to buy:
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Thanks for the blog tour support x
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It was a pleasure taking part Anne!
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