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Eleanor (1463 KP) rated The Shadows in Books

Jul 29, 2020  
The Shadows
The Shadows
Alex North | 2020 | Thriller
8
9.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
A thriller with some real chills. Returning to his home town for the first time in 25 years Paul is still haunted by the murder that occurred there in his childhood and with a copycat about he's not the only one finding it hard to forget the town's horrific past.

This is not a tale for the weak-stomached with some truly gory and creepy imagery. It's both well written by Alex North and the audiobook was a great listen (narrated by Hannah Arterton and John Heffernan.)

I did find the ending slightly anti-climatic but I think part of it was the build-up was just so good.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio, the author, and NetGalley for the copy.
  
The Shadows
The Shadows
Alex North | 2020 | Thriller
9
9.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review. The opinions are entirely my own, and any quotes are taken from the ARC and may be different in the final published copy.

While I have "read" audiobooks for years now, this is the first one I was given to review. Let me catch my breath before starting. Wow! OK. Wow! That needed to be said.

Alex North's "debut" novel, The Whisper Man, was a 2019 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Mystery & Thriller. When I finished reading it, I immediately added his second book, The Shadows, to my must-read list.

The narrators of The Shadows are Hannah Arterton and John Heffernan. The combination of North's writing and Arterton and Heffernan's narration provides a story that feels as if the narrators are the characters themselves, sitting by a fire, retelling North's story, and not merely reading the story. It is their narration that helps North bring the listener down the rabbit hole and ending up questioning everything they thought was true. I needed to reread sections to see how I could have gotten everything so wrong.

North is a British crime writer who has previously published under another name. According to Goodreads, this is Arterton's first narration. While Heffernan has narrated a few novels, he writes mostly for film and TV but also wrote Driver For The Dead, his first comic book series.

This 200-word review was published on Philomathinphila.com on 7/14/20 and updated on 8/24/20.