A short psychological thriller filled with twists and tension and featuring more psychology than thrill and mystery.
Altered features a psychiatrist protagonist named Justin Wright, who gets a new patient experiencing paranoia and blackouts amongst other things. It is quickly discovered that this patient has Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID. I don't really know much about DID, but my ignoramus self thought that the author seemed to have done his research on psychology and mental illness, especially DID, and was also able to incorporate this well into his characters. After finishing the book, I checked his Goodreads profile and found out that he has a degree in psychology, so all I can say is, Seems legit!
A lot was packed into this book, which I find amazing. It does not only explore the patient's DID, but also the major characters' psyche. We also find out about the major characters' pasts which clearly still affect them, giving the book this layer of sadness underneath the plotline. He does this by switching the POVs quite a few times though, which you may or may not mind much. They are all such imperfect and realistic characters, each with their own flaws and issues to deal with, but they get by through help and support.
As for the suspense thriller aspect, the prologue really gripped me and increased my anticipation for what's to come. It was definitely a great start to a novel. I went into this completely blind, so I think I set my expectations too high at the start because I felt somewhat underwhelmed by the end of the novel, to be perfectly honest. I like the novel for what it is, don't get me wrong. And the way we find that all the major characters end up being connected to one another in some way, as well as where the events of the prologue come into play, is all pretty cool. It's a solid plot with a shocking ending that I did not expect and paves way for the next book in the series, but it did not "keep me guessing until the very end" as the Goodreads title stated, and I just find it to be too passive on the part of the main character for my taste.
Thank you to BooksGoSocial and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of the book!