Thank you to NetGalley and Collective Link Ltd - Roundfire Books for this ARC.

This is a wild story about Luke, a 28 year old man from North Carolina doing some travelling in Europe with his BFF Corey Cash, where he is doing banal touristy things like drinking beer in Munich and visiting museums in Rome, before he takes up a master's creative writing programme at a London university.

However, while in Paris, he finds a dead young woman in drug dealer Rémy's house and helps him and new friend George to hide her body. The story here makes a jump - one moment we get blue police lights in Paris, the next we are in London without an explanation, where Luke seeks out George's cousin Shane in a rundown pub in Catford and becomes a drug mule for him, joining his gang.

I didn't like the protagonist at all. He's got a terrible temper and can't control himself, carries an illegal knife, drinks too much and is incredibly violent, constantly getting into fights with other people, enthusiastically embracing his new life as a criminal. He swears like a sailor and constantly and irritatingly mentions the skin colour of everyone he meets. He also seems obsessed with homeless people, and not in a good way. He goes from one stupid and impulsive decision to the next, with his immature, rash actions getting him into all kinds of scrapes. And no, I didn't care about his violent father and his distant mother.

The story is overblown and I didn't like the writing style either: Clumsy, chopped sentences ("a few homeless people who had no home") like this one.

This book needs tighter editing and proofreading, there are too many  grammar mistakes and typos to be found. Also, Rémy's French needs translating - the reader shouldn't be forced to have to use a translation app.

This debut novel served as the author's dissertation for his master’s programme and was awarded a distinction. I congratulate him for that, however it didn't hold my attention and wasn't for me. Might be interesting to Americans though for the European touch and for lovers of illogical action films where you can fall into the cold, strong current tidal Thames with a knife wound and come out not just alive but barely needing treatment.