In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss a flight, and over dinner, discover they’ve both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with the same beguiling woman no one has seen since.

Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.

The opening with Jake and Mariko was arresting; the kind of opening that makes you sit up straight and settle in for what is sure to be a gripping read. The pair meet by chance when they both miss a flight at Kansai International Airport. As they get to know one another, it first seems like they have nothing in common, but soon they reach a chilling realisation: they each knew someone who died in the same disturbing and mysterious way.

What connects both these deaths, thousands of miles apart, is the appearance of a strange woman in the weeks leading up to the end. This new understanding leads Jake around the world in pursuit of answers.

The chapters alternate between Jake gathering testimonies from various people who have also lost loved ones to this mysterious woman, and the woman honing in on her next victim. I think in this sense this book could be a collection of short stories with one common theme: a mysterious woman who takes a picture of a “victim” and then that person dies with their organs swapped (mirrored) inside of them.

I loved the Hungarian mistress mystery – a woman who was the second family of a high ranking Russian officer in Budapest swallows a key and then plummets to her death from the apartment they were sharing. Her lover and her kid turn up poisoned inside a locked room. Only her other blind kid survives and years after the incident, he tells his cousin that a mysterious woman contacted his mother before and the unlikely friendship is what led to their demise.

Another story is about a woman with a port-wine stain on her face who turns up on her friend’s doorstep but with the stain on her other side of the face. She confesses that she met a mysterious woman who took a picture of her and after that, she woke up with the stain moved. Little did she know her internal organs had also swapped places. She dies about three weeks after moving in with this friend, but not before hiding under the bed and saying she had been seeing God.

Another story arc is with a guy Jurgen witnessing a threesome of his friends with a mysterious black-haired woman who then disappears.

Filled with darkness and tragedy, the book kept me interested in uncovering her origins and purpose. However, after a certain point, the repetition took some of the momentum out of the story for me. Each character’s account follows a similar pattern and ultimately ends the same way, which made it feel somewhat predictable.

This woman is the harbinger of an ancient entity. When the climax came and the reason for the deaths was revealed, I was a bit bored. I can’t say I recommend it for the ending, as it’s not satisfying at all and the epilogue makes you believe that whatever entity it was has survived millennia hidden underneath the stone temples to ancient Gods, watching the world spin fast.

I think I loved the story arc of the impromptu airport meeting best (really good writing) and the Hungarian one. I found the Japanese Expat story boring and the threesome one (besides the sexual aspect) a real let down.