RATING: ★★★★☆
TITLE: The Shadows
AUTHOR: Alex North
RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2020
SETTING: UK
PUBLISHER: Macmillan Audio, Celadon Books
GENRE(S): Thriller, Mystery, UK Thriller, Crime Drama
Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio and Celadon Books for my ALC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
BLURB
You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile–always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet–and inspired more than one copycat.
Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree–and his victim–were Paul’s friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and senile, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home.
It’s not long before things start to go wrong. Reading the news, Paul learns another copycat has struck. His mother is distressed, insistent that there’s something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.
It wasn’t just the murder.
It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again…
What I absolutely loved about this book was the dream theories. Everything about the lucid dreaming was so creepy and wonderful. I wish there was more about the dreaming in this. Charlie was terribly frightening. While he is obviously a villainous-type character, he was probably my favorite part of the story. How absolutely eerie he was.
The rest of this story was interesting, but slightly on the boring side. The one thing that really kept me engaged was the narration. While I have never heard either of these narrators in any other book, their voices were key to my enjoyment of the story. I usually listen at 3x speed and I didn’t even have to in this book because their flow was even and fast enough.
I wish there was more to the story in Paul’s past. It seemed to me that when we finally got to what truly happened when they were kids, it didn’t live up to what I had anticipated.
feather bound books 