"And then a tiny white envelope appeared on the screen, bearing the familiar phrasing: 'You have (1) new message.' With trembling hands she clicked it."
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You have (1) New Message by Rio Dayne Betario Press
book review by Dylan Ward
A woman and a man meet in the summer heat of North Africa. A Londoner races in a taxi to fulfill his desire. And a Dominican Republic boy stumbles into a nightmare, nearly meeting his own doom. These tales form the heart of Dayne's novel, You Have (1) New Message, where nothing is what it seems and each character is ensnared by The Network. Be careful what you click on.
The so-called "Bella" (her name is never revealed during the course of the story), after discovering her husband's participation in the exclusive Network, runs away from her failing marriage, to North Africa, where she meets the mysterious Haqq in the midst of a revolution. How did they find one another? The married Fabrizio begs a taxi cab driver to traverse the increasingly dangerous streets of London in his desperate attempt to meet a woman he has fallen in love with from the Internet. But does he succeed? A young boy seeking labor in the Dominican Republic to feed his family becomes an unwitting participant in another man's painstaking and detailed Internet fantasy, with an impending hurricane in the near distance. Does he make it out alive? Finally by the end of the novel, Bella emerges transformed by her broken marriage and dark knowledge of The Network and her purpose is revealed as she meets Haqq once again.
Dayne has written a taut and suspenseful novel that grips the reader with each page, the vivid and graphic detail pulling you toward its cinematic end. Available as an e-book, it is an appropriate format for a story that becomes a bold testament to the dangers of the virtual world and is set against the backdrop of political and social issues while navigating nature's own terrifying disasters.