The Shadows is a psychological thriller. There are two timelines, the present and 25 years previous. Creepy, dark and suspenseful, with a plot that hooked me from the beginning. This audiobook has two different narrators - both are nice to listen to.

A Juicy Premise that left a little to Be Desired!

The Present: Here we return to Featherbank with Detective Amanda Beck who you may remember from “The Whisper Man.”

The Scene: The Murder of Michael Price by Elliot Hick and Robbie Foster and red hand prints, lots of them. The Investigation appears to be a copycat killing.

It leads Amanda to Gritten, home of Paul Adams, who has returned to Gritten to be with his mother who has Dementia.

The Past: 25 years ago the first murder took place, involving Pau Adam’s friends and a murder scene: Red Hand prints lots of red hand prints. At the time, the murderer, Charlie Crabtree got away, disappearing without a trace. Paul’s mother is insistent that he investigate on his own, that there is something in their house - which leads to dreams, which lead to questions, all of which haunt Paul and terrify him more than he’d like to admit. They are in fact the reason he has stayed away from Gritten for as long as he could remember.

Gritten Woods is gloomy and atmospheric. It’s dark and foreboding and yet, never once was I scared holding my breath, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

In my opinion,“The Shadows” held such promise and yet somehow, it simply didn’t quite deliver. I was left wanting and waiting. Much of the time, while reading and listening to this, I was bored waiting for the plot to pick up the pace and give me something meaty to bite into like Alex North’s “The Whisper Man” which I absolutely loved. I am however only one reviewer thus I highly suggest reading other reviews as this may be the case of my being the wrong reader for this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Celadon Books, MacMillan Audio and Alex North for the arc.

Published on Goodreads on 8.5.20.
Excerpt to be published on Insta.

This audio book is so creepy, you will need a nightlight on if you listen to it at night. Intriguing, suspenseful, and a twist you don’t see coming until the end. The two narrators were excellent! 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 rounded to five for Goodreads. Thank you Netgalley, MacMillan audio, and Alex North for this advanced audio in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for sending me the audiobook of The Shadows, by Alex North in exchange for my honest review.

As someone who loves scary movies, I don't read nearly enough thrillers. So when I find one that intrigues me, I jump on the opportunity. The Shadows is a dual timeline story. The first is set 25 years ago, in which we follow Paul, James, Charlie and Billy, their dwellings on lucid dreaming which led to Billy and Charlie committing a gruesome murder, and Charlie disappearing never to be found again. The second, present time, follows Paul as he comes back to the town for the first time since the murder and a detective whose current investigation's leading her to the same unexplainable assassination from 25 years ago.

I found the concept of this story incredible and when I was listening to it right before bed I got really spooked about going to sleep and dreaming. This was one of those books that I just wanted to make sure some light was on to remember that the story was only that, a story. However, as the book went on I got less and less freaked out, which disappointed me (what's the point in reading a thriller if you don't get scared?).

Even though I enjoyed this a lot, the book got confusing at times. Part of that is due to Paul being an unreliable narrator, something I love, because I was always wondering if he was telling the truth. Another part is the fact that I listened to this on audio and couldn't always keep track of what was "then" and what was "now", but I still loved the narrators and felt like they did an amazing job.

The main issue I had with this book was simply that there were too many intertwining characters and, besides the group back when they were children and the detective, I couldn't keep track of everyone/remember everyone's names. I still really enjoyed the book but I wanted more on Charlie, seen as he's pegged as the main part of the story and is what links both timelines together, and more of the spooky feeling I was getting at the beginning.

I didn't see most of the twists coming but they didn't really surprise me that much, even if they were satisfying. I just feel like it was this incredible build-up that lost its momentum and tied things up a bit too nicely for my liking. I still think this is a very solid thriller novel, the writing was brilliant and it got me interested in reading The Whiper Man by the same author, especially after I found out that this detective is firstly introduced in that one.

I ended up giving this a 3/5 ⭐️. I can't really say how it compares to other books within this genre but I did really enjoy it and found it very entertaining, a great idea that I had never seen explored before.

This was such a creepy and spine tingling book that I needed in my life. The atmosphere in this book was so tense and creepy and it was absolutely perfect.

Throughout this story we follow two main characters Paul and a detective investigating a gruesome murder. As we follow Paul the time does jump between before and now. Both these timelines were so creepy. The before scenes were following Paul and the lead up to a gruesome murder that haunts Paul and the now scenes follow Paul back home after 25 years.

I was listening to this as an audiobook and I was so creeped out. At one point I had to pull my earphones out so I could hear things around me because I was scared someone was going to jump out and kill me.

There were some plot twists in this story that caught me by surprise but I was a little disappointed with the ending. Everything seemed to wrap up very quickly and very easily which disappointed me a little hence the 4 stars and not 5.

All in all this was a really creepy and atmospheric read that I definitely recommend.

BOOK REVIEW ⁣⁣⠀
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The Shadows ⁣⁣⠀
Alex North⁣⁣⠀
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“ 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒐𝒌. 𝒀𝒆𝒔, 𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒕. 𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒔𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒊𝒕, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒐𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚'𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈". ⁣⁣⠀
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The Shadows is not your typical things go bump in the night scary story. It is not like The Whisper Man, where you lock your doors and hug your children. ⁣⁣⠀
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The Shadows is a messed up mind Twister of a story that leaves you feeling disturbed. Four teens begin to experiment with their dreams, and it becomes a community’s nightmare. ⁣⁣⠀
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Everything is not ok, even years later the Shadows come back to haunt Paul. After 25 years the dream experiments plague him still and Red Hands, has invaded another generation of teens lives. ⁣⁣⠀
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It all starts with our parents...the mistakes they make, can haunt us for years to come. ⁣⁣⠀
Paul, James, Charlie, Billy and Jenny find this out the hard way.⁣⁣⠀
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“ 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒐𝒌. 𝒀𝒆𝒔, 𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒕. 𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒔𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒊𝒕, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒐𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚'𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈". ⁣⁣⠀
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The Shadows takes us to the brink of reality and back, and makes you wonder what really goes on when you close your eyes. ⁣⁣⠀
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Don’t be fooled, every thing is not ok.
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After reading The Whisper Man|41940236 last year this was an automatic read for me.

I enjoyed this one too. I gave it 4 stars but I could probably do 3.5.

Is it just me or is there something about books and lucid dreaming that makes you uneasy? I swear this all stems back to the 'WTF did I just read?' when I read Behind Her Eyes. You too??

Anyhow, when Paul's mother gets sick and he has to return to his childhood home his past starts to haunt him. Charlie Crabtree has always been bad news but he disappeared many years ago... didn't he? Charlie had committed a murder and now there was a copycat on loose... or is there?

While The Shadows by Alex North can be read as a standalone, it does have the same detective (Amanda Beck) that was in The Whisper Man, plus relatively the same setting so I ended up reading them in order. You don't get to know Detective Beck all that well, but it was nice to go a little deeper into her character in this book. I didn't find The Shadows quite as creepy as The Whisper Man for some reason, but it is definitely still creepy, disturbing, and complex.

I did the audio for this one as well, and I really enjoyed having two different narrators. Hannah Arterton voiced Detective Beck while John Heffernan narrated for Paul and I enjoyed them both. I do think this book might be better read though as once again I was a little confused at times just because it is on the complex side, especially when we start finding out who did what. I ended up having to go back and read certain parts of my physical copy just to make sure I understood what was going on. This could just be a me problem, but I think it is something to keep in mind.

I really enjoy North's writing style, and The Shadows was a solid read for me. The crime/detective fiction aspect was very satisfying, and I thought there was a bit less of the supernatural in this book, but it still gets a little creepy. Nothing scared me to the point of nightmares, but the lucid dream aspect was freaky and not something I would be interested in having happen to myself! There are two timelines and quite a few characters, and I liked how the author linked everything together, even if it did get confusing at times.

I would read The Shadows if you are a fan of this author, or if you are just looking for an engrossing crime fiction/police procedural novel. I liked it about the same as The Whisper Man and am looking forward to reading whatever North writes next!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my advance listening copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

NOTE: The audio quality on NetGalley Shelf was not great, the voices sounded distant and tinny.

Thank you to NetGalley, Alex North, and Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to the ARC of The Shadows.

I loved North’s The Whisper Man and was excited for his new book. And, I wasn’t disappointed!

Four teen boys do a lot of fun things together, but, thanks to their friend, Charlie Crabtree, they do some that aren’t so much fun....like killing someone. Paul is accused of the crime, but released from jail when two boys confess, and Charlie, vanishes forever into The Shadows. After Paul is released and deemed innocent, he moves to forget and put his life back together; but, as an adult, when his mother is ill, he comes home to her and his past......and a copycat murder!

This book will keep you awake at night for a long time! Extremely entertaining!

Unfortunately I am the odd man out on this one as I really did not enjoy this book :( I can appreciate that it was well written and that the two story-lines were woven together excellently, but I still just did not care at all about anything that was happening. I was never really pulled into the overall mystery and I didn't particularly care for either of the main character's perspectives. Even though this one didn't super work for me, I do think that the audiobook did a great job of capturing the spooky vibes of the story and I think that if this book interests you, I would recommend checking it out that way!

This book was suspenseful and eerie. I loved the two narrators and the story itself.

I loved getting the background story and also seeing things thru Detective Beck who i absolutely loved and who also appears in The Whisper Man if you have read it.

The story starts off with what happened 25 years ago about a murder and disappearance and then brings you back to the now where it looks like another copycat murder has happened. The main character Paul is unraveling and finding secrets about what happened 25 years ago.

I loved the lucid dreaming, Charlie Crabtree with his sinister self and the shadows. this story is nothing like The Whisper Man and expect another great eerie story.

Having thoroughly loved ”The Whisper Man”, I was delighted to get my hands on this author’s next book!

The concept of lucid dreams was very intriguing, but I didn't care for it as much as I anticipated. I was confused by the dual timeline and too many characters. With so much going on, I couldn't keep up with everything.

This audiobook was my introduction to the new NetGalley Shelf app. The story might have been less bewildering as an actual book, rather than audiobook. But I'm still a fan of the author, and will certainly read his next book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Alex North and Macmillan Audio, for this free digital ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

Another incredible group read with <i><b>No Rules - Just Thrills!</b></i>

<b>My Rating: </b> 3 ⭐️’s
<b>Published:</b> July 7th 2020 by Macmillan Audio
<b>Duration:</b> 9 hrs 5 min
<b>Recommend:</b> Maybe. Great author...might be better as an actual book.

@writer_north @MacmillanAudio @NetGalley
#TheShadows #Netgalley
#psychologicalthriller #NoRulesJustThrills #InExchangeForReview #JustFinished #Audiobook

After publication, my reviews can be found:
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Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/takemeaway21
BN.com, BookBub

So I want to be clear about my review. I did not completely finish this book, but that's no fault of the book. I have a lot of trouble sleeping and this book is so focused on lucid dreams that I found myself thinking about it as I tried to fall asleep.

From a review standpoint, here's what I can say. The plot was slow in the beginning but seemed to be really catching steam towards the middle.

The narration was perfect. Smooth and not intrusive, so I never found myself noticing the narrator instead of the story.

It's a very dark feeling book, which is usually great for me, but this time just seemed to get in the way of my life personally. It's weird because books don't usually affect my personal life, but oh well, live and learn.

The premise is really creepy and original, so perfect for most mystery, thriller, and horror lovers. I would stil recommend this book to people even though I couldn't finish it. Maybe I will try again one day.

This book had a great concept, but it’s hard to follow a book like The Whisper Man! I chose to listen to this his book on audio. It definitely had the creep factor and the voices were perfect, but the story got bogged down in the explanations. Lucent dreaming is something new to me and quite fascinating, however, the story didn’t flow between the past and present well and didn’t live up to my expectations.

I was hesitant to dive into this book because I don't care for horror novels, I usually find them to be too farfetched to even be truly scary. This one, I liked. Perhaps it's because it doesn't actually fit into what I would consider "horror", even though it does have horrific events throughout. Without giving away the plot, not everything is what it seems and even the most farfetched elements actually make sense by the end. I went in with a preconceived notion of what this book would be, but by the end it was something entirely different. It was a tragic, psychological mystery where family in all its messy dynamics plays a crucial role.

I highly recommend the audio version. The dual narrations are very helpful in keeping the story engaging to the end.

I received an audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The book was such an epic read for me! I am not one to read thrillers/horror/mystery books in the least bit, so the fact that I managed to fit this in on top of Mexican Gothic is surprising.
 
The premise of the book is about several murders that have occurred over a few days, the first being that of a teenager murdered by his supposed friends. This first murder leads Beck back to a small town with a hauntingly similar and gruesome murder that occurred twenty-five years before. The book follows two POVs, DI Amanda Beck and Paul Adams. As Beck investigates, she interviews Paul, someone who was intimately connected to the murder that occurred twenty-five years before. Paul himself is a stranger in his hometown, trying hard the last two decades to put the murder in the past. He returns when he finds out his mother is dying and is seemingly pulled back in, forced to face his worst fears. His mother claims something is in the house, a copycat killer is on the loose, and a missing boy thought to have had a hand in the original murder may be lurking in the woods.
 
The story is suspenseful and creepy in all the right ways. The voice actors were perfect for their parts. Their take on the characters was spot on, which only added to the suspense. I recommend listening to it for sure.

The book was very slow. There were times I thought we were finally getting to the action and good parts only for it to slow back down again. I've listened to thrillers and chillers before and this book wasn't even creepy to me. The narrator was great in trying to get the creepiness across in his voice but I just feel this book wasn't for me. I tried three different times to listen and play close attention to what was going on. I just kept seeing such good things about this book and author, I am sad it ended up falling flat for me.

This was my first experience with Alex North. His previous work ‘The Whisper Man’ has been on my TBR for while and this book has made me want to move it further up the list.

This story was creepy and suspenseful in all the right places. It wasn’t cheesy or phoned in like some and it kept me guessing throughout.

As far as the audio portion goes, I am always thankful when an audiobook has dual narrators. It helps the book come alive more and helps me as a listener keep the characters straight in my mind. I enjoyed both of the narrators chosen for this work.

Thank you Netgalley for this audio copy. I read the book a few months back and I was extremely excited to get my hands on it. Alex North does a great job writing creepy, thrilly, suspenseful novels and this one lived up to his hype. I was so excited to listen to the audio version of this book because we all know the audio could make or break a book if you thats your preferred way to read. This one was great! I loved the audio just as much as reading the book and this will make an awesome Halloween thriller!!

Review: The Shadows Alex North
Method: Audiobook - NetGalley (Physical copy from LIbrary)

One of the great things about The Shadows by Alex North is that it was inspired by the Slender Man legend. I must admit that before I read this book I read a few articles interviewing the author as well as about the Slender Man. It’s a morbid curiosity as well as an interest in the role legends and myths play in society. It all made me giddy inside.

I listened to The Shadows in one day, willing to sacrifice sleep in order to keep listening. I loved the narrator, the way you could feel the emotion from the main characters and the mystery. I feel that narrators should really get the kudos they deserve because you truly believe that the person is the character. The inflections of Paul, the worries of Amanda, the spooky woods, all come through because of the phrasing and the tone of the narrators. So, bless them! That being said, I felt that this book was much slower than The Whisper Man (another book by Alex North that I read recently). I felt that I kept waiting for things to really take off. This anticipation wasn’t fulfilled until later in the book but it was worth the wait. I just wished that there was more of a sense of urgency earlier on. I also felt that I might’ve missed something, regarding the timeline of deaths, while listening. Due to this, I spent the last half of the book looking for answers that I never got. This makes me feel like I need to reread the book, or at least search for that answer via Goodreads or reviewers (because others might’ve had the same question).

I feel that even wanting to find those answers shows just how much I liked this book. The fact that despite this hiccup, I still want to learn more about the novel, as well as read more about Slender Man, says it all. I would definitely recommend The Shadows to anyone looking for a mystery. If I had a rating system, I would give this book a 3.5 out of 5 stars! Fantastic!