The Nested Man by Mark Steensland

4 stars

“You aren’t who you think you are.”

What would you do if, on the first day of your new job, you received a cryptic phone call telling you that everything you know about your life is a lie? What if you were told to trust no one but the caller and that you were in extreme danger?

Frank is starting a one year guest professorship at Rawlson University when he gets a mysterious phone call that turns his life completely inside out. He holds dark knowledge in his psyche that he was made to forget, and there are people after that knowledge who will do anything to get it.

Equal parts Bourne Identity drama and Dan Brown thriller, The Nested Man takes you on a journey of mysticism, American history, and the black arts power to do whatever you can imagine if you have the right words.

The book was a touch slow for me; it wasn’t until about halfway through that I found myself really getting invested in the story. Once I got into it, though, I absolutely flew through it! The way it combines historical events and numerology with intrigue and magic is so fascinating and was a really great change of pace for me.

Frank was about to drive me up a wall, though! Despite several warnings (and a few stark reminders) that he was in danger and needed to be careful, he was acting like the single most suspicious person I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, I wanted to reach through the book and smack some sense back into him!

Overall, this was a great read, and many thanks to Cemetery Gates Media for the ARC! While the ending was a bit rushed (everything seemed to get wrapped up rather handily), I enjoyed the book a lot and loved that the ending itself was a little ambiguous so I could choose a bit of what I wanted the ending to be.