The blurb was right. This is perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay. I enjoyed every minute of this tense ride.

Well, this is one of those books that is hard to judge. I am torn between the parts that were really good – like it's spookey and got a claustrophobic atmosphere in the first part – and then there are those repetitive parts in the middle andso many long descriptions that didn't do anything for the story. It got a bit tiring here but I kept reading in hope, the feel of the beginning would return and for a while it did. The first big twist that revealed what the creatures really are was interesting but after that things went down the rabbit hole for me. The secret of the house in the woods was … I don't know. Not convincing? Disappointing?
After that comes the moment that feels like it should have been the ending, but the book continues. Then comes the next moment that feels like this must be the end, right? But no, here comes even more until the book finally does end, but this time it ends on a note that keeps open the possibility of a sequel. At that point the atmosphere from the beginning was lost and sadly I got a little bit bored. So, I don't know if I would recommend this book. There were many good things about it, but I think it needed more editing to support the pace of the story.

I ended up liking this way more than I thought when I began reading. It's part thriller, supernatural, fairytale, and adventure. Reminds me of the show Lost and Grimms Fairytales combined.

The prologue caught my attention right away, but after that, the first few chapters were boring. Once Mina got to the forest is when it really got interesting. It's worth the read, just stick with it!

The ending was great, I had figured it out from the beginning, but many might not see the shocking reveal coming. It leaves off with a cliff hanger, so I will be waiting for the second one!

Hopefully there's a second, anyway. It doesn't fully explain the forest and what "they" are. I'm hoping for more of an answer!

Thank you to NetGalley and Head of Zeus publishing for the opportunity to rate and review an e-arc of this stunning debut horror novel. I wasn't expecting much from this book besides a spooky tale but it is that and so much more. I love the premise behind the novel, the folklore it is based on, and the characters and places this author created. I genuinely think I may have trouble sleeping tonight or at least some nightmares which never happens to me. I am pretty hard to scare and I think books are one of the hardest formats to invoke the feeling of fear in someone. A.M. Shine knocked it out of the park specifically when it came to the descriptions of the watchers and creating a sense of dread from page one to the very last page. I'm not a big fan of open-ended endings normally, but for horror, I think it is a very useful tool and it is done incredibly well in this novel. Having relatable, flawed characters to center the novel around grounded me in the story and really made me care about what was going on and how our characters were going to get out of their predicament. This could easily be turned into a classic horror movie in the future that would be loved by many. This is exactly what I want out of my horror novels and I am so glad I got the opportunity to read this one.

Thank you to @netgalley and @ariaandaries for sending me this eARC!

The perfect book for ✨spooky season✨👻
I thoroughly enjoyed The Watchers despite it being more of a horror/fantasy read. I was intrigued by the synopsis itself but the book was actually spine-chilling and I definitely felt the creepy vibes! Don’t get me started on the plot twists 🤭

“You can’t see them. But they can see you.”

There are creatures lurking among them. Thriving in the depths of the night. And they are watching you. But don’t worry - you’re safe as long as you stay in the light. Or so they say..

I actually enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would initially. It's creepy, suspenseful and very mysterious.
I did take a while to actually read the whole thing, but that is mainly due to my own procrastination and not entirely a fault of the book.

I will say that at times the pacing was a little slow, at which point I believe some other readers might have given up. The lack of answers is something that might have also turned off a few readers. There's no definitive anything in this novel. We are simply presented with a creepy forest, featuring a creepy cabin/shelter in Ireland, filled with humanoid monsters without any real explanation. Where did they come from? What is their goal? What exactly are they?

If you're hoping for a tied up ending with a simple explanation, I suppose this novel isn't quite the right one.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the twist towards the end. I was already growing increasingly more anxious (had to put my Kindle far away for a moment to breathe) and then THAT twist happened and I was thrown by how clever it was. I can definitely see this being made into a suspenseful horror film. It could be so terribly creepy and atmospheric and I would really enjoy it. Not sure if I could actually watch it though, come to think of it. The book itself was scary enough for me.

I would have cut out a little of the plot in the middle and perhaps even expanded on the ending a little more, as so many things are left unexplained. But otherwise, I really, really enjoyed this read.

This was a very strange, creepy little book! The middle portion started to drag a bit, but the main twist was a fun surprise! A fun combination between "A Quiet Place" and "The Body Snatchers"!

I wanted to like this book. I had heard great things about it but i couldnt get into it at all. Sadly i couldnt finish.

*dnf at 60%*
this just ended up being not exactly the story i wanted. i would have really enjoyed more focus on the creatures themselves - what they looked like, sounded like, smelt like, the fear they caused, etc. - but this kind of felt more like a survival story to me which is not my thing at all.

trigger warning
<spoiler> grief, ptsd, body horror, mention of alcoholism </spoiler>

When Mina's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, she is merely annoyed and grabs the parrot she was supposed to deliver for a friend, walking, hoping to find somebody who was smart enough to fill their phone's battery.

I like the trope of some hidden thing deep in the woods that only few stumble upon. There is some survalist stuff in here that produced a few lenghts, and some editing of that would have done wonders for the pacing.

I like the take on what's going on here, but can't tell you much since it's all about getting there.
The ending is very ambigious and I can't tell if this is the first part in a series or just a very open ending. I think that probably it was meant to be a standalone but it leaves room for the author to come back in a few years and spin the story further; however, if there is nothing coming, I am a bit dissatisfied by this.

I'd be interested to see what else the author comes up with, and hope that the problems I had with this one will be resolved when the author has more pages under their belt.
The arc was provided by the publisher.

Ugh I'm a baby and this was too scary for me. The amount of shame I have about this is insurmountable. Always thinking I can handle stuff but alas.
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A novel set in Ireland, the protagonist Mina is an aspiring artist who's struggling for money, and accepts a job from a friend in the pub to deliver a parrot to a buyer. She drives into a remote part of Galway where her car mysteriously breaks down on the outskirts of a wood. She walks along the road which leads through the woods and this is the worst mistake she could make. Because at nightfall, with screams chasing her, she’s beckoned into a building by an older woman who then slams the door shut Inside, she finds her rescuer, Madeline, and two others, Daniel and Ciara. But now the real nightmare begins, because watching them through the window are monsters, who will kill them if they leave.

The Watchers is a fantastic horror novel, which delves into ancient Irish myths. I’ve been reading a lot of horror recently, and this is one of the best I’ve come across this year. Hugely enjoyable and well worth a read.

I really enjoyed this one - the writing style is detailed yet easy to follow, and the settings and characters are well-drawn. I loved the dark take on Irish folklore and the twists that I didn't expect (some of them I did, but there was at least one that took me genuinely by surprise). The ending had me spooked indeed! Very much recommend this to anyone who enjoys horror inspired by Irish and British folklore.

I didn't finish this because of the claustrophobic aspect. I have terrible claustrophobia, so this just wasn't going to work out for me. For someone who is not claustrophobic, this could be a very entertaining read.

The Watchers is a claustrophobic survival horror that takes place mainly in one setting. Initially, I thought the premise is interesting but I was full of questions. If the Watchers only come out at night, why don’t they try to leave during the day? But the book addresses these questions convincingly. The tension and suspense are palpable, especially when the characters are racing against time. There are some terrifying scenes of the Watchers wreaking havoc.

I was invested in the characters. Their differences had to be put aside if they were to survive, and I thought the book handles the conflict well. I really liked the reveal about who the Watchers are, which involves ancient Irish mythology. But I’m not a fan of the ending which feels rushed with an open ending.. There is potential for more stories involving the Watchers but I thought the bunker scenes were the scariest and most effective parts of the book. A solid addition to the survival horror sub-genre, The Watchers would be perfect for fans of Bird Box and A Quiet Place!

The Watchers has a bit of a Cabin in the Woods feel to it and had me hooked from the beginning. It lost me somewhere in the middle but soon reeled me back in.

Mina and three others are stranded in the middle of a forest after their cars broke down on it’s edge. The forest appears on no maps and creatures who terrorise them after dark.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, their shelter features a mirrored wall and a light that only activates at night. Within those walls they are studied by the creatures.

Mina wants answers but she may change her mind once she learns what these creatures are and what they want from her.

The writing in this is on a whole other level of creepy.

“The screams came from just outside, from the darkness where moments ago she had run towards the light. She looked to the many locks – some bolted, others mere chains – that stood between them and whatever had overrun the woodland.

‘You’re lucky to be alive’ the woman, said reaching out her hands.”

I can see why this book has received so much hype. I had an inkling about one of the major shifts but that just added to the suspense for the big reveal.

On the whole The Watchers was definitely a book worth reading.

Unfortunately, this was not the right book for me, and it was not the book's fault. Spooky fiction is not my typical genre, but the description and the cover caught my eye. The writing itself is very atmospheric and lush, and the story is based in mythology. I did not end up finishing it, but I would recommend this for people who enjoy mysterious, haunting fall books and lyrical writing.

3.5 stars.

The concept of this book had the right type of creepiness that engaged me straight away. I definitely could imagine the scenes playing on Netflix. The first 100 hundred pages got me hooked and I couldn't stop turning the pages.

After a great start, however, I started noticing repetitions. Up to the halfway mark, we still didn't get anywhere different in the story. Yes, the Watchers were still creepy and the survival story was still there, but there were too many pages dedicated to describing how terrible and insensitive Madeline was, although she was the only one who kept everyone alive because Daniel and Ciara were so useless and they kept failing in so many ways. The book really wanted to emphasise this, such that it was repeated multiple times from different point of views. We would get Madeline's chapter where she said Daniel and Ciara were helpless. We would then get Daniel's chapter where he complained about Madeline's authoritarian way, which would be supported by Ciara's chapter which conveyed the same thing. And then we would get back to Mina's (default) point of view which confirmed all of the above.

The main plot twist was kind of predictable to me, and the ending was also not surprising because I had expected that. Having said that, the overall reading experience was still very entertaining to me, so it was still a 3.5-star read!

Wow! I’ve just finished this novel and what an ending. I feel slightly shell-shocked and a bit disturbed by this incredible horror novel that’s very hard to describe, and difficult to tell you about without spoilers. I’m going to try, so bear with me. I’ve been a fan of classic ghost stories for most of my reading life. I blame the more Gothic aspects of the Brontë’s for this obsession; the tall, ghoul who rends Jane Eyre’s bridal veil in two and the pale, ghostly, child’s hand that reaches though the glass and grabs Lockwood’s shaking hand in Wuthering Heights. From that grew a love of the gothic and monstrous, honed at university and now stated by wonderful ghost stories like these. I don’t call it horror, though I suppose it is, because I don’t like blood and gore. I love the creeping sense of dread, the strange apparition that appears behind you in the mirror, the fleeting glimpse of something not human or the sound of a child laughing or singing in a house where there are none. It even extends to my own writing, because when I wrote a story about hag stones for my uni writing workshop, my tutor messaged me to say she’d found it deeply unsettling.

We see most of the events in this novel through Mina, a young woman living in urban Ireland, who lives alone and has lost her mother. Now without family - except one sister who appears to phone once a month or so, just to feel disappointed - she is largely a loner. Her loves are sketching, red wines and her friend Peter who is a buyer and seller of various things and often pays Mina cash to travel and deliver his client’s purchases. On this occasions she’s to take a golden parrot to a remote part of Galway, but the day trip becomes something she lives to regret. Having broken down on the edge of a forest, Mina realises that the likelihood of anyone passing by and helping are probably minimal. So, with the parrot in tow, she sets off walking in the hope of finding a remote farmhouse with a phone that works. Her phone has died in the same second she pulled up in the car. Once in the forest Mina realises her mistake, it seems bigger than from outside and she’s concerned that the light might start to fade before she can get to the other side. She feels unnerved, although she can’t say why, then she hears a scream that isn’t human, but isn’t like any animal she’s ever heard either. As the shadows gather she is beginning to panic, when suddenly she sees a woman beckoning her and urging her to hurry. She’s standing by a concrete bunker and although that seems odd, Mina decides it’s better than staying out here to be found by whatever made that terrible noise. As they hurry inside and the door slams behind them, the screams grow in intensity and volume, almost as if they were right on her heels. As her eyes adjust to the light she finds herself in a room with a bright overhead light. One wall is made entirely of glass, but Mina can’t see beyond it and into the forest because it is now pitch dark. Yet she has the creeping sensation of being watched through the glass, almost like she is the parrot in a glass cage. A younger man and woman are huddled together in one space, so there are now four people in this room, captive and watched by many eyes. Their keepers are the Watchers, dreadful creatures that live in burrows by day, but come out at night to hunt and to watch these captive humans. If caught out after dark, the door will be locked, and you will be the Watcher’s unlucky prey. Who are these creatures and why do they keep watching?

I was absolutely entranced by this incredibly disturbing tale and loved the way the author created this unbelievable world inside the everyday. In the opening section Mina’s world is relatively normal, she goes about her day like any one of us. She has an irritatingly perfect sister, she gets lonely, she sometimes drinks too much wine. We can identify with these imperfections and relate to her. So when this ordinary woman, finds herself caught up in the extraordinary, we believe it because we already believe in her. These woods are like countless others, we’ve probably walked into similar situations ourselves and got lost. Yet, the author carefully leave tiny details, that are probably pricking up our ears and instinctively alerting us that something is wrong. The remoteness of the place, the way her phone suddenly stops working, the single strange cry she hears as if something is on lookout, alerting others to her presence. All of these are universal literary signifiers for ‘something’s not right here’. The author never describes the Watchers visually, again there are signs they leave behind and other sensory clues: the burrows in the ground, claw marks around the window, the revolting smell, their cries. Just as Mina is standing in the light, unable to see them lurking in the dark, so are we. Even when you think we’re going to ‘see’ them, we never fully do. The clues set our imagination on overdrive, we build the monsters in our heads which makes them so much scarier as they feed into our personal fears and phobias.

The characters and their dynamics are fascinating too. With the younger man and woman quite subservient to their ‘leader’ Madeleine, the lady who beckons Mina in out of the dark, there’s an almost parent and child dynamic already established. The room, entitled the ‘coop’, gives us the impression of hens let out to feed and water, but locked in at night for fear of predators. However, with that image of protection comes a question; hens are kept safe by farmers or owners who want them to produce eggs, so what are our four inhabitants meant to produce and who owns the coop? In helping Mina though, Madeleine hasn’t found another subservient child to lead. Mina is more independent and intelligent than that. She’s also a watcher herself, used to being alone and observing others, she sketches people secretly when in public places. The coop is no exception, she gets the urge to capture different expressions and moods in her fellow prisoners, particularly drawn to the planes and contours of Madeleine’s face. Mina doesn’t want to contest Madeleine’s authority, but she will contribute ideas and challenge those she thinks are wrong. I wondered if this would upset the existing dynamic, start a power struggle inside, and raise the tension even further. I was fascinated by how these others had ended up here and what would happen when they start to run out of food or something else that pushes them outdoors. Is there any way of escaping? This author has created a brilliantly layered horror, with an ending that was truly unexpected and even more terrifying. I have just explained the story to my next door neighbour and she’s already closed the curtains tonight! This was incredible and even better is the fact that it’s my first A.M. Shine novel so I have a whole back catalogue to enjoy in the Christmas break.

This is the perfect October read! Its creepy and claustrophobic! I loved it.
Some brilliant twists and turns! I can't wait to read more from Shine!