source: purchased
rating:★★★✩✩
from goodreads:
You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile--always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet--and inspired more than one copycat.
Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree--and his victim--were Paul’s friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and senile, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home.
It's not long before things start to go wrong. Reading the news, Paul learns another copycat has struck. His mother is distressed, insistent that there's something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.
It wasn't just the murder.
It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again...
my review:
the shadows was a good creepy book, it kept me on the edge of my seat wanting to know more and more as we slowly progressed through the book. the lucid dreaming and reliving the murder by going back to a place you were trying to avoid can bring a creep aspect into play. paul ran from his childhood trauma until he was forced to come back to see his mother with dementia. we all know he did not want to go back to his home town but did anyways and was hit with the creepiness from his past. guilt, noises, dreams, and secrets are all to be uncovered as paul spends his time at his childhood home.
there were a lot of characters to follow with this book jumping from past and present and different points of views so it made it kind of confusing and hard to follow, which kind of messed up the book for me, not completely ruined but not great either.
i was super excited to read this because i've heard that alex north is an amazing author so i thought this was going to rock my socks but it was meh. i guess i'll have to read the whisper man to see what north can really bring to the table.
favorite quotes:
"perhaps life was just a matter of doing what you thought was best at the time and then living with the consequences as best you could afterward."
“and just as our dreams are shaped by our reality, there are times like these when our lives can be changed by the dreams we've had.”