Book Review: The Shadows by Alex North
Within the first two weeks of 2021, I got and finished the book The Shadows, by Alex North. I had heard of this book for a while and I kept putting off reading it because I didn’t have the time or money (lol broke college student vibes) to do so. I decided that for the new year I wanted to read at least 5 books and I knew that The Shadows was going to be the first one I read.
The book itself is more on the creepy/dark side and I would say it’s in the mystery/drama genre. It’s not too long so it’s a pretty easy read and trust me, you’ll get through it so fast because I could not put this book down. The story focuses on the present and past experiences of main character Paul Adams and how he is coping with returning to his hometown after 25 years. Leaving his hometown and forgetting everything he knew was a choice Adams made after a horrific crime that shook the whole town. While you don’t know exactly what happened or how Adams was involved, the book focuses on how this same crime from 25 years ago is still coming up now in the present day. While reading, the book switches between focusing on Adams’ life and another character named Amanda who is a cop investigating these current copycat crimes. I really enjoyed how the book changed perspectives from chapter to chapter and how you didn’t learn the crime until the VERY end. And let me tell you it is a shocking twist! Every time I thought I predicted correctly what was going to happen I was quite wrong once continuing through the book.
Overall, I would give this book a 9/10 only deducting a point because the first six chapters were very dark. Obviously it wasn’t enough to stop reading, BUT I think this is something to keep in mind in case you are more sensitive to scarier books/movies. I absolutely loved how this story was written and like I said before, the differing perspectives in every chapter made it much more interesting to read while also clearly and smoothly telling a story.
You should definitely read this book if you are more into crime/mystery stories. If you read this book, let me know what you think of it once you finish!
Onto book #2 of 2021...
