Blog Tour: The Shot – Sarah Sultoon

Samira is an up-and-coming TV journalist, working the nightshift at a major news channel and yearning for greater things. So when she’s offered a trip to the Middle East, with Kris, the station’s brilliant but impetuous star photographer, she leaps at the chance In the field together, Sami and Kris feel invincible, shining a light into the darkest of corners … except the newsroom, and the rest of the world, doesn’t seem to care as much as they do. Until Kris takes the photograph. With a single image of young Sudanese mother, injured in a raid on her camp, Sami and the genocide in Darfur are catapulted into the limelight. But everything is not as it seems, and the shots taken by Kris reveal something deeper and much darker … something that puts not only their careers but their lives in mortal danger. Sarah Sultoon brings all her experience as a CNN news executive to bear on this shocking, searingly authentic thriller, which asks immense questions about the world we live in. You’ll never look at a news report in the same way again…

Sarah Sultoon is a journalist and writer, whose work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. As passionate about fiction as nonfiction, she recently completed a Masters of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, adding to an undergraduate language degree in French and Spanish, and Masters of Philosophy in History, Film and Television. When not reading or writing she can usually be found somewhere outside, either running, swimming or throwing a ball for her three children and dog while she imagines what might happen if… Her debut thriller The Source is currently in production with Lime Pictures, and was a Capital Crime Book Club pick and a number one bestseller on Kindle.

My thoughts: this book was so good, gripping, shocking and impossible to put down. There is something about the character of Kris that is so compelling, but then all the women in the book would probably agree.

Heading to some of the worst atrocities in the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur) with naive but talented Sami at his side, Kris captures the human interest stories we, as consumers of news and media, want. The ones that are more than just facts and figures. Quite literally, the faces of these human tragedies. Sami puts them together for the team back home, not realising there’s something much darker going on.

The final section of the book flips everything that’s gone before upside down. Suddenly there’s something else going on, acts of mercy or cruelty? Sami’s naivete was a shield, but others were watching and picking the story out. Absolutely brilliant writing, honestly not at all where I thought this book was going. Not giving anything away, so you’ll have to read it yourself.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.