It’s worth noting that it doesn’t require any one momentous event to bring an individual to the same decision our protagonist James has made. Michaela is as quirky a character as her ex but their relationship, until it ends is quite touching, her presence in James’s life a life raft in a sea of uncertainty.

Watson has shown us that although we might often regret the way human interaction has changed for the worse with the emergence and prevalence of various technologies, it is those same technologies that can make all the difference in times of crisis. I think it was about an hour too long, At 11 hours and 5 minutes it is on the long side and it could do with a bit more of a ruthless edit. In Berlin, his ex-girlfriend can’t believe what she’s reading, much to the annoyance of her new partner. Although Mark Watson says in his acknowledgments he wanted to show how technology had the power to bring us together, so many incidents leading up to the premise showed how it had created more loneliness and disconnection that for me did not outweigh its upside.

Edinburgh holds a special place in James’s heart, a place he visited regularly with his father Alan, prior to his death. From the premise - a man who sends a suicide text to all the contacts in his phone and then puts his phone into flight mode so nobody can reach him to talk him out of it - I expected to spend the entire time being furiously angry at the main character for pulling a stunt like that. I never imagined loving this book as much as I did and although it did take me a while to get through (purely because I need to be in the right state of mind to read something so heavy), it was amazing and truly heartbreaking. Either way it needs a big trigger warning as the entire book is about someone planning to suicide and how they got to that point. It’s hard to read the novel without reflecting on where his knowledge of suicidal thoughts came from (Watson has been quite open in the past about his struggles with his own mental health) but I thought this made the writing feel completely authentic.

Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). And it also showed how easy it is to imagine we have such a small impact on other people's lives that nothing in their life could possibly be our fault. We got to know all the different people in James's life and how his message affected them but I wanted a bit more. His partner has left him, he no longer speaks to his sister or best mate, and he's just lost his job.There is his mother Jean, ex girlfriend now living in Germany Michaela, his flat mate Steffi, best friend Karl and his estranged sister Sal, who is living in Melbourne. He sends a mass text to everyone in his phone’s contact list to say goodbye, and then turns it to flight mode. And he doesn’t wallow in the victim mentality – as in, they’ll all feel bad and that’ll show them, but touches on it by thinking about the impact it will have.

I would like to thank Harper Collins and Netgalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest and fair review. The big plus for this book is that, at least in my experience, it will make you rethink how you interact with others and you may learn to be a slightly kinder person. As the train snakes its way from London to Edinburgh, we get the backstory of what led James to this decision.

I would have liked if Mark Watson focused on the present with all the messages, rather than focusing on the past.