This story was so creepy, it made my jumpy.

I loved the narrators. I struggled when reading this independently sometimes getting confused if Amanda was talking or Paul was at first, so listening it made more sense.

Excellent, creepy, ghost/crime mystery!

This book was so creepy and weird and I loved every minute of it. I just love Alex North and the way he writes. I never quite knew what was going on or where this book was headed. I had so many guesses and they were all wrong. I loved the way everything played out with such a logical and satisfying explanation but was so far off from what I thought. There were several moments that shocked me! And the creep factor was HIGH.

I was SO excited to see this book as Listen Now. I absolutely love the concept of audio ARCs because I'm a big audiobook listener. This is a great audiobook. I love the audiobook reader's voices. I like that they had accents but were still easy to understand. Their voices were very pleasant to listen to and they put just the right amount of emotion into the reading.

All in all I love Alex North and I really think this one was even better than The Whisper Man. Can’t wait to see what he writes next.

Review of The Shadows by Alex North:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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25-years ago a dark and gruesome ritualistic murder at the hands of teenager, Charlie Crabtree, rocked the small town of Gritten Woods. Paul Adams, once a friend with Crabtree, has spent the last quarter of a century trying to compartmentalize and forget about the horrific events in his past but he soon discovers that doing so is impossible. Charlie Crabtree was a kid with a disturbed and sinister mind who believed that by mastering lucid dreaming and offering a sacrifice to “Red Hands” that he could disappear from the real world and live in the world of lucid dreams where he could be all-powerful and in full control. His convictions were the sole reason behind the murder. Following the murder, Crabtree disappeared without a trace. His disappearance piqued the interest of believers and occult followers. Adams is now faced with learning that there’s been another murder and even more unsettling is not knowing who is behind it. Is Charlie still alive out there pulling strings or did he really disappear into the dream world and has this one event turned into an urban legend that will trigger copycats around?

If you ever had a sleepover as a kid and tried conjuring Bloody Mary from your mirror; if you’ve tried having a seance to talk with the dead; or if you’ve been fascinated with stories of Slenderman, then this book is for you. I couldn’t stop turning the pages because I needed to know who (or what) was behind the murders. The character development was in-depth enough that I truly felt like I knew them all but I felt like it missed an opportunity to talk about Charlie’s family and his upbringing. Charlie had a sinister mind and the social worker in me kept screaming “sociopath!” The horrifying murders were detailed enough but not so detailed that I couldn’t stomach it. There were many surprising twists that I didn’t see coming but the book fell short with an anticlimactic ending. Anticlimactic but made sense. I do have questions that I think were intended to be left to be open for interpretation by the reader so I’m excited to discuss in book club at the end of the month!

I was excited to get to listen to this audiobook. Unfortunately the netgalley shelf app was not working out for me. I don't have a lot of memory on my phone (everything requires an app these days!) and as soon as I downloaded the app I was warned about my low storage. Then instead of being able to just stream the story it wanted me to download (even more storage use). Okay I did. Then I hit play and it tried to download again. After saying I already successfully downloaded it. So while I know this is a great book with a spooky and entertaining story (hence the 4 stars) I can't actually listen to it because of the app it forces you to use to do so. So I will just stick with reading the ebooks.

I honestly don't have much to say about this book. I don't have super strong feelings about it. It was enjoyable. It was fascinating... And that's just about it. There wasn't anything ridiculously terrible or superbly amazing. It was just so so.

I do want to say that be very, very careful if you want to lucid dream. Do a lot of research first and be aware of the potential negative effects.

Overall, this book was quite spoopy and enjoyable but nothing to write home about.

You might have removed yourself from the game, he seemed to be saying. But the game isn’t finished with you yet. ⁣
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When reading The Shadows, I put aside the thought of, “Is this better than The Whisper Man?” I wanted to be able to review it as a stand alone, away from North’s previous hit. This task was very hard to do. ⁣
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If this was any other author, I would have said yes this is amazing and creepy! I need another nightlight because I cannot sleep. If I compare this to North’s previous, I would say this is just like The Whsiper Man 2.0. I can definitely see the parallels vividly in this book. I said I wanted to review this as a stand alone, but it is SO HARD to do that when the comparisons to The Whisper Man are right there in front of your face.⁣
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I will say I was confused for the first 1/3 of the book. Am I to believe this is truly real? Or, is this another fictional character that is an urban legend that is pretending to be real? I couldn’t see a clear path in the woods (haha, pun intended) on where this was going. ⁣
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This book was actually kind of sad. There are 3 cases of two schoolmates killing a third and that’s what Dectice Amanda Beck is trying to see if there’s a link. It’s just sad that someone would groom another just to kill them at such a young age. I wish they would have given a little bit more of Beck’s past to help me connect more. However, the concept of lucid dreams and being awake while asleep scared the mess out of me. I was pretty scared to have a wonderful dream. ⁣
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I enjoyed The Shadows, regardless if it was very comparable to The Whisper Man. I honestly like these urban legend type books and have been drawn to them recently.⁣ The audio made the book that much creepier, and I really enjoyed the narration.