DEADSTREAM Book Review

Deadstream¹ by Mar Romasco-Moore, eBook, 319 pages

*Synopsis from GoodReads or Audible: Rear Window meets The Ring in this sinister YA thriller, in which a teen girl witnesses the livestreamed murder of a popular online streamer by a paranormal entity . . . and could be its next victim.

After surviving a car accident that claimed the life of her best friend, Teresa is now terrified to leave the safety of her bedroom. Since then, her only solace and window to the outside world has been the online community she found through streaming. But one night, the safe world Teresa created starts to break down. A shadowy figure appears in the background of her favorite's streamer's video, and his behavior mysteriously changes over the next few days before he dies in front of thousands of viewers. Teresa finds herself at the center of a life-and-death investigation as the world tries to figure out what or who this figure could be . . . especially as it begins appearing in the other people's streams, compelling them to "open the door" and let it in—including Teresa’s. In order to save herself and the rest of the internet from this relentless entity, Teresa must venture outside of the mental and physical walls she’s created. But will she be able to conquer her fears before anyone else loses their life?

BOOK REVIEW: This gives a similar to vibe to the movie Unfriended. I think that's why I liked it as much as I did. I'm not one to really watch live streams and the only one that I've watched is Felicia Day's and even that was only once or twice. Not to say that I don't watch YouTube videos because I can tell you right now that I've been sucked into the couple who bought an abandoned house, the woman who bought a house for $1, and the couple who bought a chateau in France (just discovered them and been doing a deep dive of their content).

Any who...this is another one that I forgot what it was about and an accident keeps getting mentioned but I deduced early on it was a car accident as stated in the synopsis that I don't remember reading. I was immediately hooked. I swear I would have had this finished in 2 days if I didn't need sleep. The way the author tells the story by including a description of what is "on screen" for the live and then including the chat log was fun. It was like you felt included in the live stream until it got spooky! I gave this a 4.5 star. One of the reasons I can't get into without giving anything away but it was the way some of the dialogue was written but it did end up making sense at the end why it was written that way. I thought it was just something that hadn't been caught yet as this was an early copy before edits. The author includes other chat logs in like a private chat room along with text messages but it's not clear who is speaking which line of text. It was all just running text with no distinguishing factors like names/screen names. I wasn't always able to figure that out either. I also feel like there was a little bit of closer needed about a couple characters. I've tried to type it out a couple times but I can't do spoilers but I will say that we needed one more convo between Teresa and Jolley.

4.5/5 Stars

2025 Reading Challenge: 27/50 complete

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