I enjoyed this book but I also found ti extremely violent, too much for my tast.
I think it's well written, the characters are interesting and the plot is solid.
It's completely out of my comfort zone but I think it can be recommended if you like this type of books.
Many thanks to the to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Journalist Andrew thinks he's getting on with his life following the brutal murder of his boyfriend/photographer and his investigation of a brutal story involving a Mexican drug cartel and the dozens of family greed destroyed when trouble comes knocking on his door again. Suddenly Andrew finds himself in the thick of everything again, except instead of holding a pencil, this time he's holding the gun.

"The white guy always survives at the end" - Maybe not this time, for Andrew.

I really enjoyed Call Him Mine - and while this is an exciting, action-packed sequel, it's deinfitely not a necessary one. I don't think anyone would be really missing out on a big piece of the story if they only read Call Him Mine and didn't pick up How to Be Nowhere.

One of the reasons I loved Call Him Mine was because Tim MacGabhann did use a lot of inspiration from his own life as a journalist in Mexico, and experiences of others in his field. While the story and the conclusion of the investigation in Call Him Mine was a little bit too perfect, the trouble in How to be Nowhere was even more unrealistic - which makes sense, as this story was inspired by "classic chase" movies.

I do think that Andrew became this completely different person in How to be Nowhere and I'm not sure if I liked it. He lost the gentle fragility that I loved about him, and I didn't like how suddenly he was not only holding a gun but actually using it to hurt people.

This book is also VERY horrific and violent in parts and it does go into some detail - there is one particular torture scene of a character I had grown to like, and it was pretty difficult to read.

I still enjoyed this book as the writing is very good, the setting is unique and the story itself is unlike a lot of things I've read before. But I preferred Call Him Mine, and would probably recommend it as a standalone novel.

Sometimes you can look at a book and know without a doubt it is going to fuck you up. And, lo and behold, that is exactly how this book went. Granted, I did know somewhat what I was getting into by reading this, after Call Him Mine.

Not that it helped.

How to be Nowhere follows Andrew, now in Argentina, a few months on from the events of the first book. He has settled down, thinking himself safe from the major players of the story he helped uncover, but then they come bursting back into his life, leaving him forced to help them.

What I loved about Call Him Mine, and what I continued to love about this one, was the writing. Tim MacGabhann has that kind of writing that’s just quietly devastating. It’s the kind of writing that makes you want to stop even bothering to try, maybe you’ll go fling yourself into the sun, so that you can escape the way it shreds you into tiny pieces in only a sentence. It reminds me of Melina Marchetta in that respect, that ability to find the single perfect sentence to cause maximum devastation.

And it’s not just that about it. It also has all these repeating patterns and motifs, and that is honestly one of my favourite things about it. All the times Andrew spoke to “you”, the repetition of Love, if you get this, all of it was…a Lot, really.

It’s the writing which has turned this book which, plot-wise, I was possibly less involved in than the first, into a book which has entirely wrecked me. It’s a violent book, but the violence doesn’t overshadow the journey Andrew has taken (has had to take).

And really, after that ending, I need even more.