First of all, the cover pictured here is MUCH better than the one on the ARC, which shows a well-dressed young man relaxing on a coffin top holding a single red flower - which almost implies a romance within, which there isn't... This is a dark and humorous story, truly a compelling read, about a young man, disturbed by incidents from his past, ignoring the problems of his present - sleepwalking, insomnia, nightmares, and a strange turn in his life from being taken care of by Mam to taking care ...

The Dead I Know is a gripping, emotional rollercoaster of a book. The story centers around Aaron Rowe, who has left school to train as a funeral director with John Barton, owner and operator of JKB Funerals. Aaron lives with his Mam in a caravan. Mam is not mentally sound, and it makes Aaron's life very difficult, especially because he loves her so much. Their relationship is a complicated one and, without slipping in a spoiler, not what I expected. Aaron sleepwalks, having nightmares that seem...

Five years ago when I read a book I always had a pencil in my hand and made notes and grabbed quotes as I read. As I have been reading more and more electronically, now when I do read a physical book I find I just have lost that habit. But this book was so compelling that I stopped on a number of occasions to write down quotes to share with others. This is the first of Scot Gardner's books to be released in Canada. It was an amazing read. I literally read it in less than 24 hours and could not s...

Powerful, haunting, and absolutely unforgettable, The Dead I Know is not Scot Gardner's first novel, or even the first one to win him recognition, but it's the first one of his books published in Canada, and one that you simply can't afford to miss. It's a tour-the-force examination of the always difficult subject of death, grief and coping with the loss of a loved one. Above all, though, it's a heart-wrenching insight into one boy's tragic life and a deeply affecting, thought-provoking and unse...

This review is also posted on my blog, In The Good Books.I had no idea what to think of The Dead I Know before -- or even as -- I started. All I knew is that it was a recent Aussie release, and that was good enough for me. Though, by the end, I was pleasantly surprised.There's a lot of mystery shrouding Aaron in the beginning. He's stoic, and initially doesn't give much away through either his dialogue or first-person narration. We understand him better once we get a look at his home life, and s...

Favourite Quote: There was the unknown, the dark, the cold and the emptiness to contend with out there, but those concepts are all relative. Cold compared to what? A dead hand? Dark compared to what? Unblinking eyes? At times the ocean seemed full beside my emptiness. At times it was the one knowable thing in my world.The Dead I Know is a story that comes together like pieces of a puzzle. It is dark, mysterious and refreshingly different read.This story is so different from what I expected but i...

I was expecting this book to be somewhat like Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. Not in the way that I thought this book would be a love story or a zombie book but in the way that I thought it would be dark like Warm Bodies in exploring death but also in a twisted like hearted way. I got none of this from the fourteen chapters that I read. That is all I could make myself read. I was hoping it would get better as the story went along and Aaron got more familiar with his job. Yet I found it boring and d...

A finished copy was provided by the publisher for review.I didn’t know what to expect from this one. I actually thought it was about a medium (someone who speaks to the dead), but I was wrong. The description is very simple yet it shows there’s something more than what is on the surface. Aaron being a funeral director in training is correct. What I didn’t expect was the truth that finally came out in the end.Aaron’s nightmares are vivid and scary..Violent and morbid. I couldn’t understand what i...

Wow, I really enjoyed this book, what a fabulous new voice, with a unique and surprising tale. It was hard to remind myself that this was intended as a Teen Novel. Despite the lead character being one, I never felt that I wasn't reading a serious adult novel. As someone who herself applied to work as a coronary assistant at the age of 16 and was turned away due to my age, I was fascinated with Aaron's ability to face the dead, and his feelings around them. This book was quite different to what I...

Brilliant. This book is beautifully written, fantastically structured and utterly compelling. I couldn't put it down. Scot Gardner's writing just keeps getting better and better.

A recent spate of YA novels with intensely unpleasant teenage male protagonists had made me almost wary of picking up yet another novel about a seventeen year old male but Gardner's protagonist Aaron Rowe is a compassionate, honourable, complex and deeply endearing character.