I love a good anthology and this one was tops! There wasn’t a story I didn’t like and there were a few I loved!

An interesting collective of authors all contributing to one book. The writing was almost seamless between them, though it was easy to recognize when a few of my favorites took the reins. The mystery was interesting and well plotted, and kept me hooked from beginning to end. Nora was a fantastic character, and I liked the bit of unreliability her character brought to the tale. The persona of Indigo was also really fascinating, and those were my favorite parts in the book. There was a bit of repetition through the story with several phrases and elements being repeated unnecessarily, and that took me out of the story quite a few times. But overall, it was an enjoyable read and listen because I purchased the audio as well. 3 stars.

"Investigative reporter Nora Hesper spends her nights cloaked in shadows. As Indigo, she’s become an urban myth, a brutal vigilante who can forge darkness into weapons and travel across the city by slipping from one patch of shadow to another. Her primary focus both as Nora and as Indigo has become a murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos. Children are being murdered in New York, and Nora is determined to make it stop, even if that means Indigo must eliminate every member. But in the aftermath of a bloody battle, a dying cultist makes claims that cause Indigo to question her own origin and memories.

Nora’s parents were killed when she was nineteen years old. She took the life insurance money and went off to explore the world, leading to her becoming a student of meditation and strange magic in a mountaintop monastery in Nepal…a history that many would realize sounds suspiciously like the origins of several comic book characters. As Nora starts to pick apart her memory, it begins to unravel. Her parents are dead, but the rest is a series of lies. Where did she get the power inside her?

In a brilliant collaboration by New York Times and critically acclaimed coauthors Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James Moore, and Mark Morris join forces to bring you a crime-solving novel like you’ve never read before."

Seriously, just LOOK at that list of authors! It would be must read if it was a combination of just a few of them, but all!?! Hells yes.

Randomly complicated and confusing. I skimmed the last ten chapters. Ugh.

This book was a bit slow for me & too “putdown-able”, I’m afraid. Not a total miss but was hoping for a hit. I thoroughly enjoy so many of these authors but was left feeling a bit “ehhh” overall. . Thanks for this ARC!

Unfortunately, I DNFed INDIGO less than fifty pages in. I was bored to tears.

I think this is a unique concept with so many writers involved in writing the story!

Take a sacrifice to a murder god gone wrong, add in wrong memories, imaginary friends, shadow powers, and several murderous cults and you get the basics of Indigo. But the basics do not do justice to the story. Nora is a reporter by day, but she is also Indigo, a shadowy figure that hunts the Children of Phonoi who are a cult of child murders that are trying to bring a murder god to this plane. And life is getting more complicated as there are murder nuns on Indigo's trail. Charlaine Harris and company has created an interesting and fast moving thriller that comes together organically for the reader to enjoy!

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this tale.

DNF: Stopped at 50%/ Not rating

You would think with an all star writing cast like this, that this book would be amazing. Sadly, trying to read a book written by numerous authors ended up being a disjointed messy read.

At first, I was intrigued and drawn into the story. The book starts with Nora, an average, investigative reporter who lives in a run down apartment with three cats she claims to hate. Nora is in the middle of investigating a rash of child murders. Then the reader is clued into Nora's secret life. She has an alter ego, a super hero identity. She is also Indigo, a mysterious crime fighter, who is able to slip in and out of shadows unobserved. She wields the darkness like a cloak and a weapon. This was the cool part of the story. I loved the whole super hero/ alter ego identity, and I was intrigued by Indigo's powers.

However, the further I read, the more disjointed the story became. It isn't easy to pick up where the authors transition and the story is taken over by someone else, but the reader can pick up on the subtle differences. There were parts of the story where I was completely immersed and loving what I read, and then there were portions where it became jumbled, confusing and it didn't flow seamlessly. There were even some slight mistakes, i.e. Indigo swoops in and tries to save one of the kidnapped kids, only to get there too late, but then later in the story, there is a mention that she saved the kid, and further in, the child is dead again. Then there are other parts that don't fit.

I started disengaging because of the confusion and I didn't like that at times I was skimming, I am guessing it was because certain authors' writing styles appealed to me more than others. Again, there is no indication as to who is writing what part of the story.

I also didn't like the dark tone of the story, involved a cult who sacrificed children in ritualistic ceremonies to demons. Creepy and unsettling!

I finally gave up around the half way mark because I was not paying attention to what I was reading, and I didn't like the disjointed and confusing feel to the story. Even though the story had a great premise, I think this is a case of too many cooks ruining the batter.

Perhaps others will find this a better fit. I was really hoping for something fantastic as I enjoy many of the authors books who are involved. Sadly, this experiment was a bit of a flop.

Hopefully, my next read will be better. Anyone else tackled this one? Thoughts?

A great collection/collaboration by some of the best mystery authors out there!

There was a lot going on with this book. It was written by multiple writers, hence the story had multiple ways of being told. I liked the story though. A girl who has a demon living inside of her that makes her turn into a killer. Awesome! At times I had a hard time following the story. There was so much action and things going on. It was like a new story every chapter. With that being said, I was involved in the story the whole time and enjoyed the read.

A professional round robin, Indigo use the talents of many best selling offers to tell a supernatural story.
Nora Hesper is an investigative reporter with a secret: she battles justice nightly as Indigo, a dark alter that uses the power of shadows. As Nora/Indigo goes up against a cult who kill children, Nora must learn her true history and the real meaning of Indigo.
My biggest complain about the book is that is that their is not a consistent voice. Each other adds different language and mannerisms for Nora making it hard to follow a smooth flow. Once i started reading just one chapter a night, it got better and I was less likely to notice the differences in Nora's personality/langue.
I did enjoy the examination of cult mentality even f it didn't get as deep as I would have liked it. I also liked that this cult had supernatural powers and not just some nut jobs. It made it even more serious as Nora/Indigo batted for the life of the children as well as the fate of people as a whole.
Though not my favorite author mash up, it was an intriguing mystery and fun thriller.

Thanks St. Martin's Press and netgalley for this ARC.

I thought I would love this one but it just didn't work for me.

One tends to think of writers as solitary artists, constructing their stories in their imaginations and then laying them down on the page. Novels are the product of a singular vision.

Except when they aren’t.

The new book “Indigo” (St. Martin’s Press, $27.99) isn’t the product of just one writer. Nor of two or three. All told, there are 10 listed authors here – Kelly Armstrong, Christopher Golden, Charlaine Harris, Tim Lebbon, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, James A. Moore, Mark Morris, Cherie Priest and Kat Richardson all had a hand in bringing this story to life.

And it’s a pretty good story at that.

Nora Hesper is an investigative reporter – one of the best in the city – on the trail of one of the biggest stories of her career. She’s on the verge of uncovering the truth behind a series of child abductions and murders.

But she is also Indigo, a superpowered vigilante who uses her command of the shadows to track down and punish evildoers – specifically, the members of a cult devoted to calling forth and controlling the embodiment of Death itself.

Striking the balance between her two lives isn’t easy; no one – not even her on-again off-again beau Sam or her upstairs neighbor and best friend Shelby – knows the truth about Nora and Indigo.

But when the Cult of Phobos starts to grow active again, Nora/Indigo starts to realize that there are a whole lot of things about her own story that just don’t add up. When Nora was 19, her parents died in a tragic accident; she spent the insurance money traveling to Tibet, which is where she developed and studied her shadowy abilities. But why does she have a nagging feeling that something about that origin story is suspicious?

As she pulls at the threads of memory, the holes Nora’s personal narrative fabric grow larger, leaving her questioning whether anything she once believed about herself is in fact the truth. And all the while, the Cult of Phobos grows stronger and the lives of many innocent children are at risk.

Nora must come to terms with her alter ego; the longtime compartmentalization separating her and Indigo has to end if there’s any chance to defeat the many powerful enemies that seek to destroy not just her, but the entire world.

As a literary endeavor, “Indigo” is fairly successful. One would think that having 10 authors would negatively impact the overall stylistic flow of the piece, but aside from occasional choppiness, it all seems to coalesce quite nicely. Massively collaborative efforts like this are tricky; they can come off as wildly uneven and/or gimmicky. But when they work, they’re great fun to experience – and “Indigo” works.

The most familiar names of the bunch are probably Harris and Golden, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. In truth, the best compliment I can give a book like this is the fact that I never found myself wondering who wrote what while I was reading in the moment. I was engrossed in the story for its own sake. The clean lines, smart characterizations and sharp pacing of the narrative made sure of that. Instead, it was only afterward when my curiosity about the nuts and bolts of the thing bubbled to the surface.

Now, it’s not smooth sailing the whole way. Every once in a while, a clunky stretch presents itself, a spot where maybe the connective tissue of the collaboration shows through. But those bits where the seams show are both rare and brief; it’s never long before the story pulls you in again.

“Indigo” makes for an engaging read, an entertaining supernatural mystery. It’s breezy while still offering the odd moment of visceral intensity; you’ll speed through it in the best possible way. The propulsive tale never stops moving, and even in the odd moment it missteps, it continues ever forward. An excellent summer read.

This is a case where I'd recommend not putting too much stock in my star rating, because I'm just not sure how exactly to rate it. I think that this was a case of the wrong book for the wrong reader. I'm not a huge fantasy reader, but I love Charlaine Harris and thought that the multi-author set up of this book was interesting and wanted to read it (I haven't read anything by any of the authors, though I have books by several of them on my shelves waiting to be read). I found the first half or so of this book really confusing, and I wasn't sure whether the plot was actually confusing, or if as a non-fantasy reader, I just wasn't picking up on conventions of the genre that other readers won't have trouble following. The pace of the second half of the book picked up quite a bit for me, and I enjoyed the overall story. I was overall impressed with the way the story came together with multiple authors- in school, I always hated being assigned group papers because I found it difficult to present a cohesive voice just in academic writing, but these authors did not seem to suffer from this.

By day Nora Hesper is a jounalist following the story of missing children that have turned up murdered in the community. By night however Nora becomes Indigo, a brutal vigilante that is taking on the murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos responsible for the children’s deaths.

Indigo has a darkness about her slipping from one shadow to another and forging the darkness into weapons to help her in her missions. Nora has memories of her parents deaths and traveling afterwords where she studied meditation and strange magic in a monastery in Nepal after which Indigo became a part of her life. Now however Nora is questioning her memories and just where the darkness in Indigo was formed.

Indigo is a collaboration between ten very well known authors, Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James Moore, and Mark Morris. How, where, when and why these ten chose to write this story together I really didn’t know but having read and enjoyed some of their books I had to pick this one up and check it out for myself.

Not being a huge fan of a superhero type of story I was hoping that I would actually like this one despite the authors involved in creating it and I’m glad the story was one that while due to personal preferences I wouldn’t quite give five stars too I still liked reading this one. I was expecting a vigilante/superhero story but Indigo’s is a bit darker than that with a supernatural element added to it which I appreciated. In the end I’d give this one 3.5 stars and recommend it to those fans of the urban fantasy genre.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I have read books by many of these authors and enjoyed them. Unfortunately, it is inevitable that Indigo, being a mashup of several authors' styles, reads exactly like that - a mashup. It is an imaginative plot with lots of twists and turns the reader doesn't see coming probably due to unexpected input by various authors. However, some authors are more successful than others, remaining truer to the character's personality and mannerisms set before in prior chapters than others. This makes a couple chapters feel forced to fit the overall plot and character development. Uneven, but the unique storyline and genuine surprises might be worth the time for some. Sadly, more than a third of the way in, I found myself not remotely compelled to continue the story despite the looming suspense, which felt more and more manufactured rather than a natural development.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What an amazing collaboration of some of my favorite authors! How did all these imaginations come together to compile such an original urban fantasy tale.

I say urban fantasy and the retailer's buy links say anthology, mystery, suspense and thriller. I think all of those work except anthology, this is a collaboration but it is one singular story and not a collection of literary works as I assumed the term anthology implied. Now you see my excitement and surprise on how masterfully it was put together. Lets not forget the fantasy side. INDIGIO leans heavily on the occult and paranormal/magical side of things, so to me this is a really amazing urban fantasy read.

I have to admit, I wasn't really sure where this was going and it did take awhile for me to find my invested in the story. But once invested, I was surprised and elated by the many twists and turns as well as the nail biting suspense that these authors have created.

If you're a fan of any of these authors, if you love a great urban fantasy read, check out INDIGO.

I received this ARC copy of Indigo from St. Martin's Press. This is my honest and voluntary review. This book is set for publication June 20, 2017.

My Rating: 4 stars
Written by: Charlaine Harris (Author), Christopher Golden (Author), Jonathan Maberry (Author), Kelley Armstrong (Author), Kat Richardson (Author), Seanan McGuire (Author), Tim Lebbon (Author), Cherie Priest (Author), James A. Moore (Author), Mark Morris (Author), Eva Diaz (Illustrator)
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication date: June 20, 2017
ISBN-10: 1250076781
ISBN-13: 978-1250076786

Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/indi...
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Indigo-Novel-C...
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/indi...

Reviewed for:
http://tometender.blogspot.com

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This was an odd story. Extremely odd. I'm still not sure if I enjoyed it or not.

Nora Hesper is an investigative reporter with a secret life. At night she turns into Indigo who can use shadows to disappear and to travel from place to place. She uses her talents to track down the Children of Phonos who are sacrificing children to bring back an ancient murder god.

Nora is an interesting character whose past sounds like it came right out of the stories in superhero comic books. As events unfold, it becomes more an more apparent to Nora that the past she remembers isn't the past she actually lived.

The story was an exciting urban fantasy mystery. I couldn't tell that it was written by a bunch of authors because the story seemed to me to flow seamlessly from one exciting bit to another. I liked Nora's struggles to understand her past and her relationship with Indigo.