The Angel Maker is Alex North's third book and my favorite out of all of them.

While marketed as a thriller, I did not get those vibes, but more of a mysterious where is this book going sort of feeling. And that's not a bad thing. The story kept me thoroughly engaged, despite being a slow burn. There are two different storylines running parallel to each other, making you wonder how they will intersect. By using flashbacks, North does a really great job laying down the foundation and backstory that tie together multiple events in the past and present that seem totally unrelated.

Philosophy, especially the subject of determinism, plays a huge role and it is something that really makes you think. It was tied into the narrative in such a clever way and I think that played a huge role in why I really liked this book.

I really enjoyed this story. I started reading and didn't stop till the mystery was revealed.

It was kind of challenging keeping the characters' relationships straight in the beginning, especially with the flashbacks amd time jumps, but I figured it out.

Without giving anything away, the pacing is steady, similar to Alex's previous novels. The action does get bogged down sometimes with the allusions to the past, but nothing that took away too much.

There was a point where I wanted to tell a character to just call the police to get help, because it would have helped A LOT, but, well, then there wouldn't have been that element of danger in the plot.

Overall, I found this to be an entertaining read.

I was so excited to see a new Alex North book after LOVING his first book - The Whisper Man - which was so real and creepy that I was scared to pick it up too late at night. Not many books make me question every little noise I hear or make me look over my shoulder while reading, but that one did! Then I read The Shadows and enjoyed that as well so couldn't wait to read his next novel. So maybe I went into this one with too high of expectations but I was just so confused for the majority of this book.

There were two main plot lines going on with a then & now style but I had a hard time keeping track of which timeline I was in. There wasn't a huge cast of characters, but I found myself constantly having to flip back and remember who was who with this story as well so I never felt like I could really sink into the story and just enjoy it. I love a story that makes me think, but this one had me working too hard just to keep everything straight. I wish each chapter would have had a heading with the name of whose point of view we were in and the date just so the reader could right away be in the right mindset at the start of each chapter.

The story was interesting and I definitely was invested to see how it was going to play out and how the characters and the then/now timelines would weave together, but I just expected to be on more of a ride and turning pages as fast as I could to see how it all turned out. I just was left confused and also a tad underwhelmed with the WHY of the plot as well.

Alex North is a great writer and I would absolutely recommend starting with The Whisper Man as that is a book that I still think about to this day. I will absolutely read more by this author but this one just fell a little flat for me.

Thank you to Alex North, the publisher Celadon Books, and NetGalley for my eARC in exchange for my review.

Another great book by Alex North!

This book was action packed from start to finish. There were a lot of subplots that get woven together to impact the overall plot of the book. Because of this you must pay attention to detail. I did not feel like this was a book you could easily put down and start reading again. There were a lot of characters so you might forget what is going on. However, the characters were well developed and fleshed out; There was even likeable detectives, which I personally find hard to find in a book.
I was not a huge fan of philosophical discussions but I understand why they took place in the book, and how they helped with the overall plot.

This book was a 4.5 stars for me, but I rounded up due to there not being a half star option. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes thrillers and suspense novels.

Do you believe that your life if predetermined, no fate or free will? That’s what serial killer Jack Lock believed and what he taught his two sons, Alan Hobbs and Edward Leland. Who is behind Chris Shaw’s brutal attack and why does older sister Katie Gardener keep seeing an old red car? Detective Laurence Page is hot on the trail to find out the connections to who killed Alan Hobbs and how does it tie into Chris Shaw’s unexplained attack. This storyline has varying timelines and it all comes to a conclusion at the end of the book.

The Angel Maker
By Alex North

This is a crime thriller with many elements. It contains an abused boy who has grown up to abuse his own sons and to become a serial killer; an estranged sister and brother who must find their way back to each other; a husband and wife who love each other, but have lost the art of communicating – and their daughter who needs protecting; and of course the requisite detectives who discover that coincidences may be more than just that. There are also the "bad guys": the mentally ill Michael Hyde and the warped Edward, son and disciple of the serial killer and his twisted philosophy of "Deus Scripsit".

The story is a complicated plot which was somewhat confusing at first. But Mr. North manages to bring it all together so that all the parts fit. It is a little creepy, but I think that is the author's intent. The overall themes of choices (or lack thereof) and good and evil are well spelled out and lead to a satisfying ending.

Thank you NetGalley and Celadon Books

As a devoted Alex North fan it has been exceptionally difficult for me to give The Angel Maker two stars.

From the start of the book it is difficult to follow and all over the place, because of this it made it really hard to get invested into the characters and the situations at hand.

Overall it just felt very disorganized and all over the place.

When I first started reading this book. I was thinking what am I in for? Well this story started off with Sam and Katie. Katie saying how she resented her family for not letting hang out with Sam as much as she could before they went off to college. Katie wasn’t allowed to go to Sam’s house unless his parents were home. They weren’t allowed to be alone together at all. Katie had to be home right after school and she had to walk home with her brother Christopher.

One day she decided she would go to Sam’s house instead of going home with her brother. Well she immediately regretted that decision as soon as she was close to being home. She saw cops and an ambulance just outside her house and saw her brother Chris laying in the street. He had been attacked. He was laying in a pool of blood.

Chris had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He went on to being in trouble and disappeared. Why did Christopher Shaw disappear? What was he afraid of? Or who was he afraid of? Read the book to find out.

I loved the book!! It was so good!! Very well written! The characters were great too. I could connect with Katie a lot as I read. She had a lot of resentment toward her family. I really could relate with her on that level. I will definitely recommend this book.

@writernorth is one of my auto-buy authors! I really enjoyed The Whisper Man and The Shadows! This book has an amazing cast of characters. I loved the guessing game of how this plot all came together at the end. Be sure to check it out!!! .
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• Thanks so much to @celadonbooks and @netgalley for the early copy! .
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• Coming February 28, 2023! .
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• Synopsis .
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• Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fieUntil the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever.

Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future. .
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Ended up a DNF for me, only my second this year out of 80+ books read. Just could not get into this book and the switching between characters was more chaotic than your average multi-character novel. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

I fell in love with Alex North after reading The Shadows, so I jumped at the change to read The Angel Maker.

It did not disappoint. I was turning digital pages late into the night!

I loved the varying timelines, the multiple characters and trying to piece together how they were all connected.
North has a way with his words and writing style that has the creepiness leap from the page and have you become somewhat uncomfortable and uneasy.

This book explored Determinism which I do not believe in but did make me ponder the idea of its possibility.

I didn't love love the ending. I would have liked to see things wrapped up a bit more or an epilogue to see what happened after.

But despite the ending, I loved the book and it was absolutely a five-star read for me!!

If you love psychological crime, serial killer books, unsettling thrillers than this is for you!

This book was pretty slow at first because it's from different character's perspectives & they're all catching up with what the other characters, and thus the reader, already know. It picks up though and I didn't forsee everything that happened (ha!). This is the 3rd book from Alex that I have read & I enjoyed all of them

DROP. THE. MIC!
Alex North’s latest blockbuster THE ANGEL MAKER had me glued to my seat from the first page, which, I might add, I could not turn fast enough. Don’t start this one at night because you WILL lose sleep as you lose track of time and stay on the hunt with Detectives Pettifer and Laurence.
When they are called to the scene of the brutal slaying of an old, semi-retired professor the past and present seem to collide in the investigation of what exactly happened.
Meanwhile, Katie Gardener is married to her high school boyfriend, Sam, with a daughter. She hasn’t seen her brother Chris for two years after she washed her hands of him after he stole from their mother. Katie harbors quite a bit of guilt over not being there for her brother 17 years ago when he was attacked on the street. Chris fell into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol addiction. However, when Katie’s mother calls and says that Chris is in trouble Katie immediately begins trying to find and help him. Sibling bonds are strong, indeed. As she races to find and help Chris, Detectives Pettifer and Laurence also begin looking for Chris as a suspect in Professor Alan Hobbes’s murder. What’s the connection and how do these circumstances return to the past?
I loved all of the intricacies of this book. There was NEVER a dull moment and, in Alex North’s style, the twists and turns just kept coming. I also enjoyed the banter between Pettifer and Laurence. Their relationship as partners added yet ANOTHER quasi-sibling relationship to a very interesting read.
BRAVO, MR. NORTH! BRAVO!

I’ve seen a lot great reviews about this book, so I instantly requested it when I saw it available on Netgalley! Thank you to the author and @netgalley for my copy to read and honestly review.

From the beginning of Part One, I was hooked into every piece of this story. I enjoyed learning about the characters and seeing how they connected to one another over time, specifically Hobbes and his brother.

This was a solid thriller, with excellent writing to match. I highlighted so many quotes and passages that I truly loved while I was reading, which doesn’t always happen for me with this genre!

I highly recommend this one to lovers of crime fiction, fast paced thrillers, and books focused around serial killers.

Too many characters. Too philosophical.. It’s like a book that you need to take notes over to keep up. I don’t like thinking this hard when reading. This one wasn’t for me.

One of my favorite parts of this book was the discussion of Determinism, which was a fascinating concept. It’s the thread pulling the whole story together.

My only quibble with the story comes from the character of hide and his vendetta against Katie or, more specifically, her daughter. It would make sense for Hyde to want to correct course with her not existing if she were the daughter of Chris. But nothing else in the book suggests that Katie wouldn’t end up with Sam or they she wouldn’t have ended up with a daughter. So his insistence that she shouldn’t exist falls flat.

Big thanks to Celadon books for the approval to read an early copy of The Angel Maker. SUPER excited to get to read new Alex North. It is just as creepy and twisty as I remember The Whisper Man being! (haven't read The Shadows yet)

I did a hybrid of audiobook and ebook because I tried to listen to the audiobook while working (as I usually do) but could NOT keep anything straight without seeing words on the page, lol. It all came together by the end but certainly if you're like me you will need to work on focus :-)

My one downfall was it took some time to get the people and timelines straight. Like, I probably could have kept a notesheet of people & dates to have an easier time trying to make sense of the seemingly unrelated characters. BUT worry not-- everything comes together and makes sense by the end. Wow, just wow; the way all the character's lives end up being intertwined... crazy and twisty and awesome.

I loved the creepy feel of this story. Specifically descriptions of the house Hobbes lives in, the story of the serial killer Jack Lock, and the mystery of a missing child. I also found the aspect of determinism fascinating. It made me wonder if people that believe this find life super boring; they're just resigned that they have no say in what happens to them!? Nahhh, I ain't here for it.

Totally loved the story and thought the narrator did a wonderful job. The right inflections, differences in voice for dialogue. She blew it away!

3.75 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.

Not quite as good as The Whisper Man, nor as spooky, but still quite discomfiting.
North has the ability to make his readers very uncomfortable with tales of crime and horror. This one is no different.

Edward and Alan are two small boys with A very scary father. Edward is the model child who does everything his father asks. Alan is not so disciplined. When Alan finds his mom beaten on the kitchen floor he can't help but be devastated. He defies both his brother and his father and enters his father's private space. While Edward protests, Alan retrieves his father's sacred journal and absconds with it. The journal supposedly tells everything that will happen in the boys' lives. Deus scripsit.

Katie and Sam are high school sweethearts. Katie wants to go home after school with Sam, but she is always to meet her brother Chris and walk him home. Except for the one day she doesn't. Of course this would be the day that Chris becomes the victim of a random violent crime. The crime will forever alter Chris both physically and emotionally.

Flash forward many years later. Another violent crime has occurred. A strange car is seen lurking outside Katie's daughter's daycare. Chris has gone missing. While these could be unrelated events, somehow they all seem to be tied together. Detective Laurence Page was present after the first random crime, and now is caught up in these crimes as well. Will he be the one to finally put the pieces together?

Terrifying in its own way, this novel exemplifies the very dark side of human nature. But it also shows the best that some can be. Psychologically unsettling but also fascinating. Definitely recommend for those who love psychological crime.

I wouldn’t really classify this is a thriller and more of a crime type theme story. I couldn’t quite connect with the characters. I will say I did not expect that ending. I thought I figured it out but nope! And the ending felt super rushed.

This book was amazing! I couldn’t put it down. Absolutely terrifying and thrilling at the same time. One of my favorite books!!