Cover Image: The Shape of Night

The Shape of Night

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Member Reviews

Great on atmosphere, but this book was not for me. I do admire Tess Gerritsen for branching out of the straight crime fiction genre, but I think she did it far more effectively with Gravity. The Shape of Night was a mish mash of paranormal happenings, romance, dark secrets, escape and erotica, and didn't work for me on any of those levels.

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I have always l;loved her Rizzoli & Isles books so was looking forward to this book and it was totally different and that took some getting my head around. Once I got over the hangup in my own head enjoyed this book It is a very tangled read

Ava has rented a old mansion that is on a point looking out to sea. She tells everyone she needs the space to write her latest cookbook and needed the large kitchen but really she is on the run from her own guilt as she blames herself for her brother in laws death. Things take a strange twist when she meets the ghost of the sea captain that built the mansion but this ghost is definitely R rated and when he tells her he will protect her as many young women have died in the house you have to wonder who he will be saving her from This is a story that draws you in and has you questioning just who Ava needs protection from the ghost or something much more human

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This is really not my type of book. So hear goes, I usually love this authors books especially her Rissoli and Isles series but this is something else. A ghost story okay I can deal with that, mysterious deaths another tick but ghost sex yes you are reading this right. A step too far and smacks of ghoulish Fifty shades of Grey. The storyline was unbelievable and really made no sense at all. I am sure other readers will enjoy it more but this book is definitely not for me. Maybe it is my age after all I am sixty four year old.
I would like to thank the author, Random House UK and Netgalley for the ARC in return for giving an honest review

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Anyone expecting a Rizzoli & Isles mystery will be disappointed: The Shape of Night is a return to Gerritsen's days as a romance writer, with an added supernatural twist. While not my usual genre, this is well-written and pacey (as one would expect from Gerritsen),https://www.netgalley.co.uk/member/shelf albeit beyond far-fetched plot-wise.

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4.5 stars.
Ava is trying to escape her past so she flees her Boston home for an old house on a remote Maine peninsular called Brodie's watch. Her main aim is to use this time out to concentrate and complete her cookbook which is based around New England cuisine. On moving in she finds that there are still some renovations going on in the house and she hopes that this won't disturb her. She should be so lucky as it is entirely something else that has her up at night. She believes that she may have come face to face with an old sea captain - in fact, the captain who the house is named for. If this isn't enough to concern her, there are also a spate of "accidental" deaths occurring nearby. Ava tries to get to the bottom of things by looking into the house's previous tenant who left abruptly but she fails to get in touch with her; for obvious reasons as it turns out!
As she questions her own sanity whilst enjoying her nighttime excursions, her investigations into what is happening around her steps up and she soon discovers that maybe she shouldn't have started what she now is forced to finish.
I am a big fan of this author's Rizzoli & Isles series and I've also read and enjoyed quite a few of her other stand alone books so, although this isn't one of my usual go-to genres of choice, I thought I'd give it a crack. And I am so glad I did! I do love me a bit of Gothic mystery and thought that the paranormal element slipped into this very well. It's suspenseful and spooky in all the right places and the mystery kept my crime loving side sated throughout. The transformation of Ava through the book is also well executed. I can't really go into too much detail but at the beginning she is wracked with guilt and other bad feelings over something that happened, something she'd done and has been running away from for quite a while and so she appears quite confused at times. By the end, well, you'll have to see for yourself how that all pans out for her.
The story was well plotted and executed with aplomb. It help my interest throughout and left me satisfied at the end - pretty much job done.
As an aside, I wish there really was a cookbook to go with this story as some of the recipes sounded delicious! My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

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I've been a fan of Tess Gerritsen for years and I love her Rizzoli & Isle crime series. Reading the blurb for The Shape of Night, I thought this book might be a return to the romantic suspense Tess used to write. I was partly right; the story is an interesting mix of domestic thriller and ghost story.

Something terrible has happened in Ava's past, something so bad she has cut herself off from her family and rented Brodie's Watch - a spooky old house, high on a cliff, once owned by a Victorian sea captain. But Ava begins to get the feeling the house really doesn't want her there. But does she have more to fear from the living than the dead? Or is the weight of her guilt causing her to slowly lose her mind?

The Shape of Night is basically The Ghost and Mrs Muir meets Fifty Shades of Grey. I did enjoy the story and I read it very quickly because I was so keen to find out what happened! But this is the kind of ghost story where the ghost is real enough to chat and romance the heroine. I much prefer jump shocks! I loved the 'small town murder mystery' vibe, the gothic house and Ava's cute cat, but I really didn't like the BDSM bits, which I felt came over as abusive rather than erotic (this might be what the author intended). And if you've read a lot of crime books, the villain is easy to spot.

Although I enjoyed the story and I'm happy to give it four stars, I'm not sure what kind of reader to recommend this book to. Perhaps fans of cosy mysteries who don't mind a ghost story and a bit of BDSM? The closest thing I've read that compares would be While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt, although The Shape of Night is not as dark.


I was lucky enough to receive an early copy of The Shape of Night, which will be published in the UK on 3rd October 2019.

Thank you to Tess Gerritsen and Bantam Books (Transworld/Random House UK) for my copy of this book, which I requested from NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

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Having read books by Tess Gerritsen before, especially the Rizzoli an Isles series, I was slightly disappointed with this book, I had thought it was going to be a crime novel, As that’s more the genre that I know her for. This is a stand alone novel so can be read without having read anything else by the author.

Ava is running away, from her past, her sister, and her life and the tragedy that has happened to her family, which haunts her every waking moment. The problem is the place she has rented Brodie’s Watch is a haunted house. She is lucky to have got it because the woman who was originally going to stay there has packed up and disappeared, breaking her lease. It seems the owner would prefer to have someone in the property, rather than it sitting empty.

Captain Jeremiah Brodie had had the house built 150 years previously, with money he had earned as a sea captain. Unfortunately, he never had chance to enjoy the house much, as he was lost at sea with his ship an crew.

Ava feels the Captains spirit is in the house, either that or she is going nuts!

The thing I find difficult to read and believe is Ava’s so called sexual encounters with a ghost, this just didn’t work for me.

The overall writing is really good, it’s just the plot for me personally didn’t work, although I am sure many people who like this type of story will love it

I would like to hank netgalley and Bantam press for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest an unbiased review

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I went into The Shape of the Night not knowing exactly what to expect, but having read that the author is a best seller, I did have quite high expectations.
The main character Ava is a food writer. ( a big tick for my reading preference). She had suffered a tragedy which led her to escape her home town and rent a house in Maine. Here she would heal and write her new food book.
The recipes and food talk was very welcomed by me in this book. However the rest of the story was more than I was expecting.
The Shape of the Night was a book that turned out to be a bit different to how I was expecting it to be. I adore crime thriller books, I don’t much like paranormal. I was expecting this to have a hint of paranormal, but in fact it was mostly ghostly occurrences.
Ava “ sees” and “feels” Captain Brody, a sea captain who lived in the house many years ago, but died at sea. If you like paranormal books then this would be an amazing book for you. It was very well written and the characters ( including the ghostly one) were fully descriptive and ‘came alive’ on the pages. ( pun intended😄). However I don’t like paranormal as I like my books to be believable. For some this would be believable, for me, it is not.
One of the big characters in the book was Ava’s pet cat Hannibal. He was well named as he is a big hunk of a cat. Hannibal made me smile and tense up with his antics.
The beginning and the end of this book were very good and I did read it fast. The beginning we learn about Ava, and then the death occurs. The middle is a lot of paranormal. But the end was excellent. Therefore I have mixed feelings about the read.
I will conclude by saying this book was very well written, the characters were fully developed with Ava especially evolving throughout the chapters. The descriptive words were fantastic making me hungry, and feel the chills of the sea wind and salty air. If you like paranormal and crime books, I highly recommend The Shape of The Night.

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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review.
This is a wonderful book, although for about 80% of the book I thought why is Tess Gerritsen writing a ghost story? Then the reason became clear with a bang!
Written with the high quality we expect from this author, it leads the reader on as fast as you can turn the pages.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to everyone.

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I love Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series so was looking forward to read this, especially when it sounded like a foray into a very different type of novel - a gothic paranormal mystery. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure whether it was the handsome ghost who was into BDSM, the too good to be true town doctor who instantly falls for the main character or the mysterious deaths of a number of women or just that the whole did not fit well together.

The main character, Ava is a cookery writer who has rented a mansion on a secluded point with views out to sea for the summer. The reason she gives everyone is that she needs to work in seclusion to finish her book, with a large kitchen for testing her recipes. However, mainly she is running away from her guilt at her part in the death of her sister's husband. After meeting the ghost of the sea-captain who built the house she decides to research it's history and discovers that several women have lived alone in this house before her and died prematurely. However, the ghost reassures her that he will protect her and she soon finds herself looking forward to his visits after dark.

The characters were well developed and the setting was atmospheric, but somehow I felt that none of the elements (gothic, paranormal or mystery) were as well realised as they could have been to pull this into a really creepy gothic mystery.

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Whenever you see a Tess Gerritsen book you think of Rizzoli and Isles. This is definitely not one of those books.
This book makes a refreshing change for Gerritsen. I loved the concept for the story. I chose it for the author and not the story and I certainly wouldn’t have picked to read the book. However, I can safely say I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Ava has escaped Boston. She’s left secrets behind. She rents and old house in Maine while she writes her latest book on seafarers cooking. However the house has its own ghost. Jerimiah Brodie. Ava fails for the captain but is it her imagination or is he real.
Fantastic ending and definitely worth a read.

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Ava rents a house in a small coastal town in Maine to escape what's happened in Boston. She wants to find peace and write her new book. Ava soon starts to feel the presence of Captain Brodie in the house and she can't work out if he's real or not. Whilst she is trying to figure this out, she also tries to figure out what happened to the previous tenant who has disappeared without a trace.

I love Tess Gerritsen's books so was looking forward to reading this. This book had a very different feel to Tess's other books but was an enjoyable read, it offered paranormal romance, mystery and suspsense. As always I look forward to the next book.


Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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This was an interesting book because although I know that Tess Gerritsen used to write romance novels, I didn’t realise she was going to bring so much raunchiness to this particular book. I thought it was a crime novel set in a haunted house! Suffice to say, I was most surprised with what the main character got up to. So not really my taste, I think Tess is definitely at her best when she writes the Rizzoli and Isle’s books.

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Have you guys ever watched Grey’s Anatomy? If I said to you “ghost sex”, you’ll know what episode and storyline I’m talking about, right? Ok, keep that in mind while I do this write-up.

It’s been quite a long time since I read a Tess Gerritsen. I tried to read Playing With Fire when that first came out, but couldn’t get past the first few pages. I never warmed to it the way I warmed to Tess’s Rizzoli and Isles series (I plan to reread one or two of them in the coming few months so keep your eyes peeled for those). So, when I saw The Shape of Night on NetGalley for review, I jumped at it, making sure I didn’t read anything about it. I wanted to go in as blind as I could.

Ava arrives at Brodie’s Watch, she thinks she’s found the perfect place to find writing her cookbook. And the perfect place to hide from her past - something awful happened. Something she’s desperate to forget.

But the old house that Ava plans to stay in till October welcomes and repels her and soon, Ava can’t scare the feeling that she isn’t alone… But is she? Is she in danger? If so, is the danger outside the house, inside the walls, or inside her own guilt-ridden head?

When I requested this and dived into it, I thought I was getting a thriller. Like I said, I went into this as blind as I could so no reading the write-up. But Shape of Night isn’t a thriller, it’s a paranormal suspense. So, it was completely different from what I was expecting.

And because it wasn’t what I was expecting, I’m not expecting sure how to review it.

On the one hand, it was a nice platter cleanser of a read. If you have looked at my last few reads, most of them have been quite heavy reads for me and I needed something light and this was a fun read. I read it at speed and was surprised how fast I was reading it. It was fun. And sometimes, you need to read something fun.

But I could never get away from the ghost sex of Grey’s Anatomy. How silly and bonkers the novel got. I mean, if it was me, I would have left that house the first night I was there, but not Ava. Even though creepy and slightly weird things are going on, Ava stays!

And then there’s the plot. Yes, it was fun, but I saw every twist coming. And I mean, every twist. Now, I don’t care if I see the twists coming or not in stories, but I would like to have a few “I didn’t see that coming!” moments. And that never happened. I guessed everything right.

Now, a few of you will wonder what this book is meant to be. A gothic paranormal suspense (I am not calling this a thriller as, in my opinions, thrillers are meant to be more faster paced, and Shape of Night was very slow in pacing)? Erotica (the number of times I saw the words “nipples tighten” or “the wetness between my leg” made me roll my eyes)? A murder/stalker mystery? It’s a weird mixture of the three as, while some elements worked, others just didn’t.

While I did have a blast reading this, it wasn’t Tess Gerritsen’s best work. but it has made me excited to go back and reread some of the Rizzoli and Isles novels that I got on my kindle during a kindle sale.

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This was a fun read. Ridiculous at times, verging on 50 shades territory, complete with ghosts but I must admit I did enjoy it, even if it is completely bonkers!

3.5

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my review.

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I requested this book purely on the back of the name of Tess Gerritsen as I am aware she is a long standing and very highly regarded crime writer. Therefore, I went into this book a bit blind as to the plot and storyline and pretty much expected a gritty crime thriller.

That is not what this book is. It is a paranormal, gothic style thriller with a murder subplot in the backdrop. It is very much not my typical genre, but you know what, I enjoyed it... a lot. I started off comparing it to Ruth Ware's The Turn of the Key, when very quickly it got pretty silly as it turned 50 shades of paranormal. The subplot was good and I was completely unsuspecting of the culprit though I had guessed Ava's big secret. So while this book was silly and quite cringy at times, I continued reading it and thought it pretty enjoyable and finished it over the course of 24 hours.

I would like to read more Tess Gerritsen in the future but probably her crime thrillers as they are more my preferred genre.

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This is different from any other book that I have read by Tess Gerritsen. It took me a while to get into. It is really well written and the ending is really good. I really liked how everything came together at the end.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

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Do you believe in ghosts? Ava knew that she had to get away from Boston too many memories and so much guilt. She thought that she had found the perfect place to hide and to finish writing her cookbook but she was so wrong. Brodie's Watch is a beautiful house that is going through the last of its renovations as the owner is eager to sell and the house seems to have accepted Ava now. So when she starts seeing things she is convinced that the house is haunted by the Captain that built it but he has been dead for so many years. She thinks that maybe her drinking is to blame and the guilt of her brother in law's death but something is visiting Ava and they want her to stay. Can the ghost really be Jeremiah Brodie and he does offer her excitement and she feels no longer alone but what does he really want from her? Why did the last tenant leave so suddenly and where did she just disappear too? Will Ava escape her demons and the house in one piece? A good thrilling read. I was lucky enough to receive a copy via Netgalley & the publishing house in exchange for my honest review.

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This is a very silly but very enjoyable thriller. Somebody is hacking into the elevator system in prestigious skyscrapers in New York and death and mayhem send the city into a panic. We have the usual stock characters - a Mayor who is venal and intend on re-election, a son he treats badly, a hard bitten women reporter who constantly writes to expose his father, said reporter has a daughter from whom she is estranged. It is all there.

When the battered body of an elevator technician is found in the city it is pretty clear that this murder is linked to the elevator attacks - the detective in charge of the murder is suffering from, yes you have guessed it, PTSD after accidentally causing the death of a civilian in a shooting.   All builds up to a big denoument when the said detective is cured of his PTSD by a shocking incident..The finale is mayhem with a finish at the top of a skyscraper with gaping lift shafts and a bomb and is pure theatre. I can see it on the screen and would not be surprised if that is where it ends up.
Fun and mindless.

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This was an unexpected tale with a twist from this author. An enjoyable, obviously well researched, story which included elements of the supernatural as well as a historical aspect. A modern ghost story or is it? A story with a very strong sense of place.

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