One Visit: Book Review (1/2)

One Visit is a North Wales, crime drama, written by George Veck in 2022. In One Visit, we follow Frankie, a twenty year old on Universal Credit after losing his job. Frankie lives with his twelve -year old brother, Dazzler and his abusive, alcoholic, drug addict father Guy and vows to protect his brother from entering the broken care system, after their father is given his final warning on negligence. Whilst protecting Dazzler, Frankie is struggling with helping out his drug dealer 'friends', who spend their days and nights partying, and his own downwards spiral, after his father gets sent to prison.

Introduction

When beginning to read this book, I definitely did not expect what was to come. My first initial thoughts of this book were that it was relatable, being a from the UK, and that it would be a unique read, which it definitely was. As I got further into the book I realised that it was not what it seems and was a lot darker than I ever could have imagined. Scanning over the book, I noticed there was a glossary in the back, which was very useful to translate the Welsh dialogue that was scattered around the entirety of the book, and noticed the book was written in present tense, which I don't often see, so it was a pleasant surprise. The dialogue and scenes were very accurate to certain parts of the UK, especially the lower or middle class, and I enjoyed reading phrases and words that I hear in my day-to-day life and they were easily imaginable for me. The dialogue also portrayed emotion, reactions and accents quite well, using apostrophes and shortenings in areas for accuracy. It was very difficult to like any of the characters in-particularly, but it was very easy to hate and dislike a lot of them, especially Damo, which I think was the point of the story. I did feel a lot of emotion for Frankie and Dazzler, watching their mental health's decline, especially nearer to and at the end, and I respect how the story ended. The book had me filled with a lot of emotion and close to a DNF, just because of how gory and horrible the scenes got, but I did end up finishing the book (though I did have to take a brief break to be able to write this post and gather my thoughts).

Pros

• Relatable to UK citizens, with accurate town descriptions, conversations and situations.

• A great eye opener to realism.

Cons

• Third person and present tense, as I always mention, which can be hard for some to read.

• Quite graphic and strong themes, that can be hard to read.

Conclusion

To conclude, One Visit is a scary, but true to real life crime novel, filled with scenes that are a lot of the time hidden from the public eye. There are a lot of trigger warnings that include: Swearing, slurs, vulgarities, racism, homophobia, sexism, violence, abuse, child endangerment, drug abuse, alcoholism, sex/ work, sexual assault and police raids, so if any of those feel to hard to read right now, this book may not be for you. I do recommend this book to adults, specifically in the UK, but also towards other countries, as an education system and eye opener towards the hidden culture of Britain. George Veck did a fabulous job with this book, bravely writing a story that a lot of people would try to hide away. Taking everything into note, I rate this book a 4/5 stars.

To anyone who has read this book, feel free to comment your opinion in the comments and to anyone wanting to read this book, I hope I helped you come to your decision. I would greatly appreciate if you would consider following and sharing my blog, joining my book club group if you liked this post, and contact me with any requests or questions you may have. Also feel free to follow my social pages, linked at the top of this page, for more bookish content!

This blog post is the first blog post written in review of George Veck's books. In the second post I write a review for Veck's second Novel 'Spurious Scrapper'. To view the second post click here: https://teegan02.wixsite.com/bibliotherapy/post/spurious-scrapper-book-review-2-2