Eve Smith – Off Target

I am so excited to be able to say, Today is my stop on the Eve Smith book tour for Off Target. Massive thanks to Anne Cater and Orenda Books for my place on the tour and  the gifted copy of the book in order to join today.

What if your future was just one modification away?

A longed-for baby
An unthinkable decision
A deadly mistake

In an all-too-possible near future, when genetic engineering has become the norm for humans, not just crops, parents are prepared to take incalculable risks to ensure that their babies are perfect … altering genes that may cause illness, and more…

Susan has been trying for a baby for years, and when an impulsive one-night stand makes her dream come true, she’ll do anything to keep her daughter and ensure her husband doesn’t find out … including the unthinkable. She believes her secret is safe. For now.

But as governments embark on a perilous genetic arms race and children around the globe start experiencing a host of distressing symptoms – even taking their own lives – something truly horrendous is unleashed. Because those children have only one thing in common, and people are starting to ask questions…

Off Target is a speculative, almost dystopian thriller that really made me think. It is in one sense easy to see that our world could easily go the way of the novel. Genetic engineering at its finest.

Eve Smiths world building is exceptional. The sense of the future is crystal clear, along with the fact that this story is a chilling one. Susan’s job of being a school teacher projects the mundanity of the present day into the future for the reader. In doing this, Eve Smith has created an authentic setting that makes everything so much more believable.

We see Susan making choices that are so unethical and, in the present day, made me almost fall off my seat. The time and place in which Susan is making these decisions, genetic engineering is almost the norm, and this is her way of cleansing her past, I suppose you could put it. Then there is Carmel, whose agenda is not at all the same. The two women couldn’t be more different in the way they react to their situations; Susan is a woman who lives on a knife edge sometimes, with her desperation for nothing to go wrong either

There is so much I want to say about this almost horrifying possibility of a future. This review does not do Off Target any justice whatsoever. The author has created characters that feel real. I was very aware of how desperate Susan is and that she was willing to do absolutely anything to have a child. I just didn’t think she was THAT desperate.

This novel feels like we are being given an actual glimpse of the future of genetic engineering. It struck horror to the very heart of me. Another Eve Smith novel that scares the living daylights out of me! So well done Eve, I loved it.

Author Bio

Eve Smith writes speculative fiction, mainly about the things that scare her. In this world of questionable facts, stats and news, she believes storytelling is more important than ever to engage people in real life issues. Set 20 years after an antibiotic crisis, her debut novel The Waiting Rooms was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award. Her flash fiction has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and highly commended for The Brighton Prize. Eve’s previous job as COO of an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places.

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