This one didn't quite pull me in. The narration style, while unique, didn't resonate with my preferences. Despite my anticipation for a captivating dystopian, gothic atmosphere, I found myself feeling a bit lost in the narrative. Reading preferences vary, and while this book might not have been my cup of tea, others with different tastes may find it intriguing.

Ok, right off the bat if you loved BirdBox or any M Night Shyamalan movie, then Your Shadow Half Remains is absolutely a book for you! The setting is so creepy and post apocalyptic. It’s so rich with that feeling of not knowing what’s truly happening because communication is lost and you’re too scared to ask a live person as you don’t know if they’ve gone crazy or not. A total descent into madness, and that was my absolute favorite part of this book! I love that psychological game where you aren’t sure if you can trust the main character because they aren’t sure they can trust what they know.

If you want a quick and creepy read (or listen), then I highly recommend you grab this one immediately! Also, the author narrated their own book. How freaking cool is that?!?

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC of this audiobook.

In a dystopian world, looking another person in the face can drive someone insane and lead to a gruesome death. Riley has been alone for longer than she can remember, but when a new neighbor moves in down the road, all she wants to do is look at the stranger. As Riley and Ellis grow closer, Riley fights the urge as she loses her grip on reality.

I enjoyed this quick, horrifying, and exciting read. It gave me Bird Box vibes, but I daresay I enjoyed it more than Mallerman’s book (and definitely more than the screen adaptation).

It’s as much psychological exploration as twisted romance. Who among us would be fully sane without years of human contact? Riley’s unraveling is fascinating, and there is a cool twist or two that adds to the tone of the book

Jesus christ, what a trip.

First things first: phenomenal audiobook narrator from the author.

The novella itself was a lot, and I'm actually really glad that I stumbled across this blog post (https://sunnymoraine.com/2024/01/26/losing-focus-cover-blown/) by Moraine when I was starting it. It made me think a lot about what makes something pandemic fiction, and the catharsis of both writing and reading a work like this, and I think I got a lot more out of it than I would have otherwise. What that probably means is that I'm a shallow reader and I needed the author to do extra work for me, but hey, that's how it goes sometimes.

Either way, the prose was - fittingly - sharp as a knife, and I'll be seeking out more of Moraine's work in the future.

Thanks to Net Galley for the early preview of this audiobook.

This book was short (4 hours on audio) and kind of dark. Similar to Bird Box, it kind of helps to read this (or listen to this) as an audiobook since there is a lot of risk in opening your eyes in public. But I didn’t get the same sense of fear as I did with Bird Box.

I wanted to like this book more than I did but I found it a little hard to follow. It helps to have a small cast of characters but sometimes I couldn’t tell whether what was happening was a dream or happening in real life (and what timeframe it was in, like past versus present). I believe this was the intent, but it made things a little too confusing for me.

But I liked the psychological horror of the book and how the reader is ‘left in the dark’ in many places (since people in the story cannot really open their eyes and we’re not supposed to know all of what’s going on).

Audiobook narrator Sunny Moraine rating: 3 stars
She is pretty good at reading this book but could improve some by changing her voice for the different characters. I liked the author’s note at the end.

Horror dystopia novella in a world where 'one look can kill'.
Going in I knew everything the book said but I didn't
realize it was a novella until just now writing this review.
It does not feel like a novella, it reads and feels like a
full-length novel. That's how well it is plotted and written.
We meet Riley who is now living off by herself by a lake outside of any city. We see what life is like with just her and why. Until a new neighbor moves in a few roads away. But why is she living all alone? There is a sickness that is going around. (I'm not going to go too much into that as it's not stated in the burb and I don't want to spoil anything. But it did have me thinking and wondering.) The only reason this book isn't five stars is because of a small part of the sickness. It's just something I don't like in books, shows, or movies; and I couldn't overlook it here.
I enjoyed the backstories. It helped show us, the readers, what was going on. Helps us understand Riley more.
Ellis, the new neighbor, made me feel uneasy at times, and then soon the author was able to turn that table around and made me feel uneasy about Riley.
My favorite part of this story is the writing. It has such an uneasy, anxious, restless yet tense feel to time. You aren't sure about anything while following Riley, she's unreliable. I will be keeping an eye on Sunny Moraine. I listened to this book on audio and the author Sunny Moraine reads it, they did an amazing job getting that anxious feeling to come to life. I enjoyed the tone, the speed, the overall vibe, and the feeling that fit the story so well.
A horror dystopia where the eyes are no longer the windows to the soul but to death; in this twisted story of peoples' minds, isolation in a pandemic world.

3.5 stars. This was a quiet/soft kind of horror book. I was really enjoying the atmosphere and total isolation aspects. I have a feeling most people would end up going crazy if you couldn't look at or be around other people. But also, any interactions would become even more special. The one thing that did take me out of the story was the random sexual encounter about 75% into the book. It just wasn't that kind of story and all of a sudden BAM. I paused the audiobook book and said, "What the frick?"

This was an odd book. I was expecting something a little like Bird Box and in some ways it was. There was definitely thrill and violence, often times quite poignantly portrayed.

However, unlike Bird Box the pacing for this is all off. There's huges swaths of the book where there is nothing happening. In some way this makes sense given the isolation that the characters find themselves in, but I think it more has to relate that this was a short story expanded into a novel. There simply wasn't enough material to warrant the expansion, at least not how it's executed.

In this same vein, the lack of materials means the plague is harped upon again and again. It is done in at attempt to bith explain the MC's actions as well as to impart the devastation that such a place woukd have in society. I. the end though, it keft me more annoyed than anything. One of those, I get it a plague happened and no one knows why but can we move on to what is actually happening NOW?

Final result 2 out of 5

I received a free audiobook arc from NetGalley.

First of all Sunny Moraine is an excellent narrator! I was literally 1 minute in and had to make a note at how much I loved the narrator! I did have some problems with mid-chapter scene changes being confusing.

This is very much Bird Box vibes except Bird Box blames what happens on the aliens. This book describes what happens more like The Walking Dead describes zombies, like it’s a fundamental change in humans rather then an external force. This is one of those books where it gets crazier by the second and there’s a point where it just all goes off the deep end and you can’t tell up from down. It was a wild ride and I think Imma do it again.


Quotes

“Scrolling and scrolling and scrolling as if she can reach an informational saturation point at which she’ll finally understand what’s happening”

“The violence is so easily made abstract. It’s easier to look at because it’s numbing and because it’s filtered through a screen.”

“And sometimes something smashes into us, does a lot more then minor damage and the changes are tremendous and we listen to ourselves from the time before and we no longer recognize what we hear”

Your Shadow Half Remains was billed as The Last of Us meets Bird Box. I really enjoyed Bird Box (still need to watch the movie version) and I’ve played through The Last of Us multiple times so this immediately piqued my curiosity. We seem to be seeing (no pun intended…you’ll understand in a minute) a rise of what I’ll call dystopian horror (either that or I’ve only started to notice more of them lately)…and I’m all for it!

Something horrible has befallen the world. People can no longer look at each other. Why? Making eye contact makes people lose their minds, sending them into violent rages. Naturally society has broken down, not completely but the world is definitely different. Riley has no one left and has cut off contact with the world, now living in a remote area. Solitude is it’s own form of torture. So when she comes across Ellis, a new ‘neighbor’ of sorts, she can’t help but be curious. She’s intrigued, and can’t help but want some form of human contact. And Ellis makes her feel safe, there seems to be a connection, and there is a desire to do what she knows she shouldn’t.

This is a relatively short piece (less than five hours and since I tend to listen to most books at 1.25X to 1.5X speed, I listened to it in a single sitting, lol. The truth is that even at normal speed I likely wouldn’t have stopped listening. There was just something fascinating about Riley’s world, her loneliness and desire for human contact despite the risks, that made me want to keep listening. I also can’t deny I have an issue with this book that I tend to have with many short stories/novellas. I wanted more, lol. I would have loved a deeper exploration of the world, a deep dive into the early days, the breakdown/alteration of society as this virus (or whatever you’d call it) spread. But I suppose that’s a testament to how compelling the world author Sunny Moraine crafted was. It’s not perfect but I wouldn’t be at all upset to see a return/expansion of this universe. As for the audio narration, the author does the narration themself. My experience with authors reading there is own work is that it’s usually either excellent or horrible. No one is closer to their work than the author, but some authors make horrible narrators. Well I’m delighted to say Sunny does a fantastic job, clearly this was not their first time behind the microphone. I'd like to thank Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review an advanced audio version of Your Shadow Half Remains.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R7HJMLQ851EFK/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

I'm not sure what I expected when I requested this a netgalley but it was weird. I initially requested this because I was fascinated by the idea that eye contact was murderous. Essentially this is a dystopian book where when you make eye contact with another person you start having violent murderous thoughts and actions that lead to death. I got a good laugh out of the entire concept because as an autistic person who hates eye contact, I knew that I would survive this 😂

Anyway, the whole thing is about this woman who is in a cabin and she goes out there to be alone so she doesn't risk eye contact with anyone but over time she can't figure out if she's gone crazy or not. When a new neighbor moves in she doesn't quite know what his intentions are and she slowly starts to like lose her mind or maybe it was already lost. Who knows.

This is much more speculative fiction than the action dystopian horror I expected but I'm not mad at it. It was definitely weird and I don't think I understood all of it but as a whole I was here for it.

I really enjoyed this novella! Society hasn’t completely fallen, but a pandemic has ravaged the world and life as Riley knows it isn’t the same. It’s been a long time since Riley has interacted with anyone else and when a new neighbor arrives down the road she isn’t sure if she can trust herself anymore let alone a stranger.

When I read the comparisons to Bird Box and The Last of Us I knew I had to pick up Your Shadow Half Remains. I feel those comparisons are accurate and if you like that kind of apocalyptic/survival horror then you will enjoy YSHR. It was incredibly easy to lose myself in this story and really feel connected to Riley. Her feelings of isolation and weariness around others really transported me back to the early days of COVID when nobody really knew what was happening. I felt like I was there.

The author does a great job of creating a sense of unease and I felt pretty anxious while I listened to this audiobook. Their voice was very nice for the narration. I look forward to buying a physical copy for myself and rereading it in the future.

Your Shadow Half Remains is a short but *wild* ride. Our narrator, Riley, has been living solo in the aftermath of a global crisis that may or may not be a pandemic: people who make eye contact with one another become instantly and unstoppably homicidal and/or suicidal. Now she's met another human being for the first time in over two years, a neighbor named Ellis. With this encounter, Riley's world gets turned even more upside down than it was before. The story is both a dark descent into madness and the sweet budding of a relationship. OR IS IT? If you're looking for a clear-cut story in which you feel like you understand everything that happens, this ain't it! If you're okay with blurred reality/fantasy boundaries and open endings, you've come to the right place.

It's definitely in the vein of other post-apocalyptic horror like Bird Box (the film at least; I haven't read the book), The Last of Us (the series; I haven't played the game), and M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. It also reminds me of the Elle Fanning and Peter Dinklage film I Think We're Alone Now, but this feels much darker—and has the added tension of the characters not being able to look one another in the eye.

Sunny Moraine does a solid job of narrating their own audiobook. I would definitely read/listen to more of their work in the future!

Review posted on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5811169587

Entertaining, immersive, and expertly narrated. A recommended purchase for collections where dystopian and horror are popular.

Your Shadow Half Remains
Written and Read by Sunny Moraine
Book 23/250
Genre: Horror
Format: Audio/Physical, ARC
Pages/Time: 176/4hr
Published: 2/6/2024
Rating: 8/10
Narration: 8/10
Horror: 👻👻👻👻

Thank you so much to TOR Nightfire for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sunny Moraine's Your Shadow Half Remains is a terrifying novella that takes the anxiety of 2020 and combines it with Bird Box and and The Last of Us. YSHR is a really exciting and quick read that I really couldn't put down; I was on edge the entire time worrying whether or not Riley was infected. I was very impressed by this novella and will definitely be keeping an eye out (see what I did there?) for Moraine's future works. Horror fans, pick this one up!

I am so tragically disappointed in this book. I really wanted to like this book but I didn't find anything to like about it. The plot is basically birdbox but less extreme, there was almost no gore at all but most problematic the mc is just an idiot.
I can not stand a stupid mc in horror and this woman was so stupid for no reason! She did nothing but take risk after risk in this book for not a single reason. She made me want to slap her just to remind her of a small amount of the pain she was risking!
Maybe others will like this book but I hated every second of this.

This was an adrenaline-inducing short audiobook! Although this book was written in 3rd person POV, I felt like I was living in the head of our main character which made for an excellent experience. I loved the immersive descriptions given, only heightened by real life lived experience witnessing the start of the pandemic. The hooks in this story were excellently placed and kept me on the edge of my seat at all times.

Specifically for the audiobook, the author also voicing the characters was incredible! I really felt like it added another dimension to the story because I could hear it how to author intended it to be read with inflections and intensity.

My only complaint is that I wish it had been longer because I didn’t want to stop reading!

Audiobook was solid. The narrator was a little one note throughout, but considering the nature of the story, perhaps that was for the best.

Full review:

**3.5-stars rounded up**

Your Shadow Half Remains is a difficult book to talk about. Frankly, I'm not sure I really understood it. At least not in the way the author intended. Nevertheless, I shall try...Regardless of how much I actually comprehended though, I still enjoyed the reading experience. It's a puzzler.

This is presented as a sort of post-apocalyptic world, where a virus has caused those infected to go into a violent, murderous rage if they look into another person's eyes. Our main character, Riley, hasn't looked at, or interacted with any other humans in at least two years, maybe more. In fact, Riley hasn't even dared look in a mirror, just in case.

She's done a great job at keeping herself shut off from the rest of the world, if there's even a rest of the world left. That is until she stumbles across a new neighbor. Ellis, the newcomer, throws a kink in Riley's routine and causes her to feel things she hasn't in a long, long time. Unfortunately, this new swell of emotions causes her to question reality in the most extreme ways.

How much does Riley really know about the world around her? Can we trust her perspective at all, or is it all just the jaded creation of a diseased mind?

We are give the story entirely through Riley's perspective. Initially, she seems confident in what she is relaying to the Reader. She seems to have a good handle on her situation, even though some details are hazy. Once her interactions with Ellis begin though, Riley's grip seems to slip. Before you know it, you are hurtling along through a fever dream of Riley's own making. It's unsettling to say the least.

For the most part, I enjoyed trying to decipher what exactly was real in this world. It was confusing, but not in a way that I found to be grating, or annoying.

I was surprised how much the author was able to pack into so few pages; it felt complete. I think it's a great example of their skill as a writer, because this makes quite an impact in under 200-pages. That's hard to do.
Overall, I found this to be eerie, disturbing, confusing and compelling. I was initially drawn to this because of the cover. It was giving me serious The Dark Half vibes and I was totally down for that. While it's a completely different kind of story than that, I feel like the unsettling cover still matches this story perfectly. I'm glad I picked this one up.

Thank you to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review.
I'm really looking forward to reading more from this author!

I went into this because the description reminded me of the bird box. I guess, in a way, it did. With the virus and looking into people eyes. But it was slow going into the book. Didn't feel for the characters at all. Especially the main one. The book picked up more when it was about to be finished. Only if this book was longer and more built up it would have been a solid 4 stars

OK. So once again, I guess I am in the minority here...
But, this was not my favorite.

Still not sure what to make of it, but I did continue reading, so there's that!

Riley is living in a very strange world. One where you CANNOT look into anyone else's eyes...for fear of death! And, death is all around her!
If that's not strange enough, it seems like the world has gone mad, as some people are actually being encouraged to rip their own eyes out...so as not to break the rules!

This is a very gory, very explicit, very dystopian type of novella. There is death (a lot of death, a lot of killing, a lot of murder)...there's also a lot of the F*ck language in this. I mean every other word at times. I'm certainly no prude, but this was just beyond my comprehension.

But, Ellis moves in next door to Riley, so I thought maybe we might have a bright light here...

If you read this, please let me know your thoughts!
Is it just me?? Or was this extremely twisted and dark??

Thanks to #NetGalley and #MacMillanAudio for an ARC of the audiobook which releases on 2/6/24 (tomorrow).

Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine.

2 ⭐️⭐️ for me.

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