Contacts: From the award-winning comedian, the most heartwarming, touching and funny fiction book

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But I did think Watson's narration of the audiobook was really enjoyable and I'm keen to pick up something else by him. We see snippets of his childhood, the fun times with his sister, his love for his Dad, the dreams of conquering the world when working in a start-up company with his buddy Karl, how he met his partner Michaela. His last social act is to send a message to all 158 contacts in his phone imparting one vital piece of information: he is going to kill himself. We got to know all the different people in James's life and how his message affected them but I wanted a bit more.

He takes an overnight sleeper train from London to Edinburgh - a journey of sentimental childhood memory for him – with the intention of committing suicide when he arrives. My precis: someone threatens to do something, then nothing happens for a good 90% of the book before a different thing happens that feels inappropriate and unsatisfactory. My thanks as always to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review.

James is an overweight middle aged man, no girlfriend or close friends, stuck in a job he doesn't enjoy believing that his life has nowhere to go, so he boards the sleeper train to Edinburgh intending to kill himself there. I did appreciate Watson's choice to make it not one huge catastrophic event that had made James' make this decision, instead everything that had happened recently just seemed a bit too much, life itself seemed a bit too much, and I think that's something that a worrying proportion of the population can identify with. It would have been cool to have each person he texted have a seperate chapter (yes, I know there were 157 or so texts so maybe grouping the 50 or so people that didn't responded into one chapter, as well as the 20 or so people who's numbers were disconnected into another, etc).

I applaud the author for tackling a traumatic emotive subject, one that people naturally shy away from, without allowing the storyline to become maudlin or mawkish in any way.No one knows how to react, and they realise how life moves on and that we can’t always be there for the people we love. 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. Halfway across the world in Australia where she lives with her husband and has a successful career, she’s a woman with her own demons and flaws. One aspect of Contacts that I enjoyed was the use of technology as a force for good; building a safety net around James even as he travels north completely unaware of what is unfolding across the globe from Berlin to Melbourne.

The novel then focuses on James’ journey and the reactions, and actions, of five people on the list, namely his sister, mother, ex-GF, ex-boss, and flatmate.

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. There was a bit of a bland “Let’s talk more” underlying message but I hardly expected anything else. This book is an interesting one, it deals primarily with suicide and so it is a heavy book but Mark Watson (who is also a comedian) manages to infuse this book with some lighthearted moments as well.