This is a real doozy of a novel. After reading The Waiting Rooms I didn't think Eve could do better but here she is with a really brilliant concept. Set inthe near future it tells the story of Susan who desperately wants a baby. After a one night stand she finds out she's pregnant but how will she tell her husband and to what lengths will she go to to hide the fact its not his. Absolutely thought provoking and frightening at the same time. A novel not to be missed

mother, and who didn't find it easy, the story around this resonated. However it's the actual plot of this thriller that had me gripped from the start. Fabulously written, it pulls the reader into the emotions of the characters and makes sure you're so invested that you have to keep reading. A brilliant book, highly recommended.

Off Target by Eve Smith is an exciting and deeply disturbing story about the length parents will go to, to have a healthy, ‘perfect’ baby! Relevant and compelling, the tension comes from the powerful themes it deals with, the genetic modification of the foetus and the consequences they have on the children. It also looks at the troubling way we treat those who are ‘different’ and how intolerance leads to fear and violence. Now this may all feel very heavy and indeed Eve Smith has layered quite painful and emotional issues throughout her narrative, yet she does so within a fast paced and exquisitely written thriller. It punches hard, delivering a provocative storyline that will have your heart racing in excitement. She delivers on the traditional elements of a thriller, crime, morality, a ticking clock counting down to a terrifying conclusion, while teaching us about an issue that has consequences beyond our wildest imagination. To do all this and deliver a story that will leave the reader unable to think of anything but the story she is telling, is a massive ask of any writer, but Eve Smith handles it with convincing ease. Within a dystopian world, which is not as far in the future as we all might think, she weaves a story that hinges on the actions of the medical, political and religious forces that are battling it out to influence a growing movement to genetically eradicate disease. Then adds a much more emotional element, by introducing characters and exploring the impact on their lives and relationships. I love the way she probed the often-dubious actions of scientists and the violent reactions of the religious right, leaving me the reader to decide if we have the knowledge and the right to play Russian roulette with our children. She treats her readers to a story that explores the ethics and makes it a stunningly thought provoking thriller, because she is willing to tackle a subject most writers would steer clear of.

I am a massive fan of speculative fiction so, as soon as I saw Karen Sullivan talking about this book on Twitter, I was excited about it. As someone who has been through reproductive trauma myself, I knew that the story of a woman struggling to have the baby she so desperately wants would resonate deeply with me, and the combination of the two was irresistible. This book delivered everything I was hoping for and more. It is such a thoughtful and thought-provoking novel which explores complex and controversial ideas in a scenario that is futuristic but plausible enough to make it urgently terrifying. Anyone who walks away from this book with a brain that isn’t mulling over their thoughts on what they would do if faced with these choices, coupled with an underlying sense of unease, wasn’t paying proper attention to the story. When I was in the third year of my law degree, one of the optional modules I studied was Law and Medical Ethics. Given my advanced age, you can see this is an issue which has fascinated me for many years. Even back then, the ethics of using advances in reproductive technology to help parents have healthy babies was one of the topics under debate and, as new discoveries are made and possibilities expand, the topic becomes only more difficult and contentious. This is the world that Eve Smith is exploring in Off Target and she really cuts to the core of the matter. Just because medicine CAN do something, does that mean that it should? At what point do the rights of the foetus separate from the rights of the parent? What actually makes us the people we are and how much can we change and still be the person we were meant to be? Where is the line to be drawn between treatment that spares children pain and suffering and treatment that edges into eugenics? These are dilemmas that have troubled society since medicine was first able to intervene to prevent unwanted pregnancies, resolve medical issues in the womb and help infertile couples conceive. You will get many different answers to what is right and wrong in these scenarios, depending on what is important to the individual you are talking to and, bringing up these topics in assured to result in heated debate. It’s an issue people feel strongly about, and reading this book is sure to provoke a visceral response in many. For this reason, it would make an excellent book club read. The fact that these questions are looming on the near horizon will serve only to make any debate more heated. These are scenarios that we may have to deal with in the not-too-distant future and, given some of the reactions we have seen over the past year to the roll out of the Covid vaccine, the extreme responses to genetic modification that Eve explores in this novel are scarily probable. This book felt prescient to me, as someone who has some small experience and interest in this area, and I found it hugely compelling, deeply unsettling and utterly engrossing. One of the most provocative and stimulating books I have read in a good long while, I can’t rate it highly enough. Orenda continue to have a keen eye for publishing the highest quality and most interesting books and authors in their chosen genres.

Off Target is a meticulous dissection of a relationship - in fact, of two relationships, that between teacher Susan and her husband Steve, and between Susan and her daughter, Zurel. Opening in heartbreaking chapters about Susan's difficulties conceiving, and the impossible choices those difficulties dictate, it then switches focus to a second part that looks at Zurel, now approaching her teens, at what she wants and fears. Both parts are set against the backdrop of runaway genetic experimentation and augmentation. In the climax of the book, the two themes entwine, bringing Susan to unwanted public attention and placing Zurel in danger. I love books with big themes, and they don't come bigger than this - the conception and development of a child, an impossible child in fact (you'll have to read the book to learn why I use that word). The future of humanity as genetic possibilities outstrip ethics, regulation and restraint. Anguished personal dilemmas constrained by money, societal attitudes and relationships. In presenting Susan's desperate desire to be a mother, Eve Smith really brings home her distress and desperation; at the same time, she's both desperate to succeed, and weary of the trying. Her most intimate moments are regimented and driven by apps and tests, her life taken over by online support groups and marketing, by a combination of cutting edge science and old wives' tales. And overlaying everything, guilt. All that's the background to a reckless course of action which Susan justifies to herself, though the reader, however sympathetic, will see catastrophe coming. The story is punctuated by a series of articles from near-future media, showcasing a genetics industry offering unimagined bounty (or is it?) - fertility, ability, the easy cleansing away of illness and disability all articulated in the bright upspeak of marketing at its most glossy. Creating a darker seeming future even than the typical grim dystopia, these snippets also chart the coming of an anti-technology subculture, driven by rumour and fake news, which will also play its part in the story. What really broke my heart, though, was the second part of Off Target. There, Smith gives us the 11 year old Zurel, a very with-it young woman who's become non-verbal following some unspecified event. Zurel just wants to be normal. Actually, she's perfect: thoughtful, kind, intelligent and perfectly able to communicate but of course against a background of gene therapies suspected of going wrong, Susan's wracked with guilt that her daughter's silence was caused by her own actions of eleven years ago. But Zurel's about more than her genes, and the truly wrenching aspect of this story is Smith's calm depiction of Zurel trying to understand herself, her origin and the increasingly scary events around her. We also get to see quite another take on Susan who was so sympathetic a character earlier. Zurel's point of view is rather different. What's so brilliant about Off Target though is that neither is actually wrong. Susan is a complex persona in - as becomes clear - a complex relationship. The critique of Susan we see here is all the more telling for that sympathy, which the reader still retains. That's totally fitting for a subject which is both morally extremely complex and close to all our hearts. As in The Waiting Rooms, Smith shows a real knack for making the complex understandable; sketching an eerily plausible near future; and creating characters who are just, well, real. Every bit as good as its predecessor, this book is what you need to be reading to understand what's coming next.