Open Your Eyes by Heather J. Fitt
A Scottish journalist enters a dark online world in this unsettling novel of men, women, resentment, and rage...
Edinburgh reporter Frankie has finally been assigned a high-profile crime story about a series of sexual assaults, andrelishes her big break. Her article focuses on the issue of women’s safety, which doesn’t seem to have improved much since the era of the Yorkshire Ripper.
When she faces a torrent of abuse online, it leads her to discover the phenomenon of incels— and puts her in the sights of those trying to stop her covering the story. But she refuses to back down. What she doesn’t realise is that in this murky online world, one man is being goaded into a spectacular and shocking attack with Frankie as his main target...
About the author
Heather was born in Scotland and after moving around Europe with her parents and sister, settled in Hampshire where she met her husband, Stuart.
After leaving the rat-race in 2018, Heather re-trained as an editor and proof-reader and entered the world of publishing. These days she works as a part-time freelancer and a part-time Commissioning Advisor for Bloodhound.
Heather was inspired to start writing her novel by the authors who have become her closest friends. Now the ideas are flowing she has plans to write several more over the coming years.
When she isn’t reading, Heather enjoys spending her time watching sport – especially her beloved rugby – and exploring the British countryside with Stuart.
Heather’s debut novel will be published by Bloodhound in Summer 2021.
For regular bookish updates, you can follow Heather on Twitter: @LifeBookish
Review
‘Open Your Eyes’ is an addictive dark dive into the world of incels that entices you to read it in one sitting! I was hooked and this is a great beginning for Heather as an author as you would not pick this up and think it is a debut novel at all. The writing is tremendous, the characters of Frankie and Liam are so well-formed and the amount of research Heather must have done shines through!
Frankie is a journalist based in Edinburgh and is unfulfilled with her job, writing fluff pieces until she is asked to write about International Women’s Day. The article concentrates on the historical aspects of the day and women’s safety rather than the feminism behind it, but she is soon attacked by trolls on the comment boards. This leads to her researching more about feminism and when she is asked to cover a rape case she once again highlights the safety of women and that is hasn't improved at all since the Yorkshire Ripper, especially in relation to the police. This leads to a tsunami of abuse being targeted at Frankie but will she stop writing or target them head-on!
Frankie is a great character which I could relate to - intelligent, coasting in life until she jolted into this world of trolls, feminism incels. Do I class myself as a feminisit? Yes, but not involved really apart from some ramblings here or there. What I did appreciate in this story is that Heather tried to make it clear that feminism is not against men and actually wants to improve their lives as well!
Liam I did actually have a bit of empathy for him as the start of his narrative can happen to anyone now. But how he dealt with it is wrong. Heather must have spent a lot of time researching this topic, I bet she fell down many a Reddit rabbit hole! I know I have spent hours on r/askreddit on the ‘nice guy’ examples in disbelief! I haven't been brave enough to look at the other forums when they were still there. However, there are even websites which allow to you see deleted forums so they are still out there somewhere!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘Open Your Eyes’ and I can't wait to see what Heather does next!
