I love an unreliable narrator and boy did I not trust Riley for a good 3/4 of this novella. Phenomenal writing, really! I am sure this was inspired by many things but it did remind me of the feeling many of us experienced at the start of COVID - uncertainty, loneliness, distrust. All in all, a wonderful piece of work.

9/10 4.5/5 Stars

This was a knock-out read for me. I am a huge fan of the Last of Us games, the show is okay too, and this book gave me the same energy that story does but was different enough that I never felt it was pulling too much from that material that was no doubt an inspiration. Sunny Moraine has a knack for lovely prose and I will read anything they publish. This quick read is a queer dystopian novella that feels like it was written with the worlds bottled up anxiety during the COVID 19 pandemic and churned into ink for Sunny to pen this tale with. If you like gruesome scenes of violence and gore and body horror, this is going to be your jam!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the eARC in exchange for a review!

Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine was an absolute trip, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Pitched as The Last of Us meets Bird Box, this book is full of twists and turns and straight up scares. Horror is one of my favorite genres, and rarely do I actually feel the same sense of dread so thoroughly as the characters, but this one got me.

Riley has isolated herself completely in a post-apocalyptic world that punishes even casual acquaintances, with eye contact now a trigger that sets people into violent, murderous rages. The first contact she has had in a very long time is Ellis, another young woman who has recently moved into Riley’s mostly abandoned neighborhood.

Riley doesn’t trust Ellis, but she also doesn’t trust herself most of the time - the result of both being paranoia sinking deeper under Riley’s skin. Getting to know Ellis comes with it’s own consequences, but maybe it’s not all bad?

It feels impossible to talk about my favorite parts of this book without giving it all away, but it feels equally impossible to spoil anything. I was constantly being surprised by this novel, thinking I knew where it was going and being delightfully shocked when I was wrong. It’s a quicker read, under 200 pages, and I think the length only adds to the quick pacing and growing sense of dread that comes with getting further and further into the story.

I am very very excited to do a deep dive into everything else Sunny Moraine has ever written, and let it consume me completely.

I am so throughly creeped out, unsettled, and disturbed. This was compared to The Last Of Us and Bird Box, and it absolutely delivered.

Riley’s world is horrifying. People are losing their minds and brutally killing others, and themselves. What is causing this? By looking into each other’s eyes. CHILLS. This absolutely freaked me out to the point that I had to turn off the audiobook (which was brilliantly narrated by the author), because I couldn’t handle the graphic images.

Friends, this is not for the faint of heart. This is an absolutely demented story and the ending left me wanting so much more. So sad that’s how it ended, but I see the artistic value in it, and I give a lot of props to this author. To pack that much of a punch in such a short book AND narrate it like a pro? Bravo 👏🏻

Thank you Macmillan audio, NetGalley, and Tor Nightfire for this ALC and ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. This publishes on 2/6/24!

This was a discomforting book to read, and that's a compliment! Even with this book being less than 200 pages, it is a quick read for how much it made me want to keep turning the page. Unreliable narrators are sometimes hard to capture; sometimes they give away too much, or I know I can't trust them and then try to find plot holes. Riley is different; I really believed her and WANTED to believe her. That's what made this book so enjoyable even as it devolved into madness.

I would have loved more interaction with the crows, as I think they are fascinating creatures and have cool literary tropes to play with. Overall, I think this is a good book to start with if you want to read something weird and morbid.

After an apocalyptic event where making eye contact causes people to enter a deadly rage, Riley is alone. She has gone quite a while without seeing another human face, and while her isolated existence keeps her safe, it is also causing her to lose track of time and crave connection with a world that no longer exists.

But Riley is alone, and she is safe, and she is content in her new and isolated existence, for the most part. At least until Ellis moves in down the road. Even though the apocalypse has taught Riley that being alone is the only way to guarantee survival, Ellis makes her feel safe. As the two grow closer, Riley finds it harder and harder to fight her deepest desires - to LOOK.

Your Shadow Half Remains is a quieter novella, a more internal conflict than the apocalypse setting might have you believe. The comp titles of The Last of Us and Bird Box do this story an injustice in a way; while the type of apocalypse is similar to those mentioned, this is not an action heavy story. There are no zombie chase scenes, no perilous journey through a wasteland, Riley is just trying to survive in a world that is trying to chug along despite it all. As the pages turn and Riley becomes unraveled, the sense of slow dread the reader feels ramps up alongside her. Trigger warnings for gore here; both real and imagined as Riley contemplates the world around her and what happens when eye contact can turn you into a monster intent on killing others around you.

A well-paced and creeping horror novella, I will absolutely be picking up more from Moraine in the future!

In this apocalyptic horror, we follow Riley, a woman living alone years after a virus that turns you into a rage monster if you see anyone else’s eyes ravaged the world. Things get a lot more complicated when a new neighbor shows up to her forest home and she has to figure out if she can trust him after being alone for so long. For a short novel, it packs a ton into it’s narrative. I thought the most interesting question it investigates is how a virus that no one really knows the rules for can mutate and change and you wouldn’t really know if you were cut off from other people. Especially a virus where the end result is madness and violence, but the isolation that the virus sends you into also can drive you crazy. This was really, really good and is kind of a perfect post-COVID narrative about how scary it is to be totally alone. Disorienting and scary, this is a great unreliable narrator read.

This review will be posted on my Instagram- @boozehoundbookclub closer to the pub date.

I devoured this book. Set in a relatively mundane pandemic world where everyone’s best bet for survival is complete isolation.

This is probably one of my favorite books that’s about COVID without being ABOUT COVID.

A nice little modern gothic horror, a Bird Box for a post-COVID world. It was an enjoyable horror read, I just wish we could know more about the world the characters are living in, rather than hyper focusing on just these two characters. I didn’t feel a strong connection to them, and found the story to rely mostly on vibes rather than substance. It was still an enjoyable read, with a great concept. I think I just wanted more.

The vibe of this book captured some of my favorite elements of Bird Box and Cabin at the End of the World as well as the hopeless, lonely feeling of the pandemic. Really nailed the dreary. The main character is really neat. Just a rock solid psychological horror story that I devoured.

Blog Post Goes live Feb 2

TL;DR: If you’ve a fear of being alone, have intense feelings of the pandemic or enjoy more topical mental hellscape type of horrors - this is for you. If you’re here for the creepy, the supernatural, or any type of humor or human endurance? Pass on this.

Your Shadow Half Remains reminds me a lot of Sister, Maiden, Monster which I read last year (and honestly deeply disliked as well). It has a very modern, relevant to our times theme and keeps us trapped in the minds of clearly unwell people during these times. This is a very pandemic centered novel, focusing on the mind of a women trapped in a pandemic, this one where you cannot look someone in the eye without being instantly driven to homicide.

Not only is it intensely brutal (for the shock factor of it all), it also looks at the way in which we become numb to the atrocities around us during extreme times. This was an interesting conversation but the slow decent into madness we experience with Riley was very… well cringe for me.

If you’ve a fear of being alone, have intense feelings of the pandemic or enjoy more topical mental hellscape type of horrors - this is for you. If you’re here for the creepy, the supernatural, or any type of humor or human endurance? Pass on this.

Please keep in mind this is very intense. A lot of gore, themes of a possible stalker, suicide aplenty, animal death/violence, death of a parent, an attempted sexual assault in the past, and possibly more that I missed

2 Unneeded Crow Murders out of 5 (the hell was that scene?)

I enjoyes this weird story. I did not know where the unrelianle narrator was taking me on her journey. I love this kind of story where I cannot guess where to next. The only reason for the 4 stars is for the open ending.

The worlds latest pandemic was hard enough but to be in one where you cant even look up at someone , where you have to fear what they may do to you. The idea is worse. scary. I liked the concept. I did not like however, how long it was taking to get to a plot of what was gonna happen with the characters. It was interesting but moved slow. I found it to be interesting and I was invested in knowing what was going to happen. The length was nice too. Makes for a good Halloween time book.

Your Shadow Half Remains is a post-apocalyptic horror novel that takes place in a world where eye contact incites violent madness, with the infected killing anyone around them before killing themself. The story centers on Riley, a young woman who has been living in isolation for years since the first outbreaks. Relying on online deliveries and what she can find in her home already, Riley hasn't encountered another person in years - until Ellis arrives.

I find this one hard to review because I did enjoy it - I tore through it in one day, staying up way past when I had planned to turn in for the night - but I don't feel totally satisfied by it. The writing was great - tense, atmospheric, adept at conveying Riley's paranoia and spiraling mental health; the story itself also unsettled me.

The story could be a bit repetitive at times, though - Riley's fears are largely the same ones again and again and there isn't much action in the present day.

My biggest problem, however, came near the end - I don't have a problem with unreliable narrators but I like the story to make more sense after a big reveal, not less. And in this case, I felt like there were too many loose threads and unanswered questions. [SPOILERS!] Why is Ellis so avoidant about his past? Why the build-up about Ellis' ex? Did Riley completely make up the footprints in the yard? I understand she's clearly having breaks from reality but having a whole scene confirming her fears of someone stalking her, only to reveal that she seems to have hallucinated the entire conversation (but not the man) was kind of frustrating for me. [END OF SPOILERS] I did really love the ending scene, however!

I still think this was a good read and I liked it and I would definitely try more by this author. If you enjoy tense, paranoia-inducing horror with unreliable narrators, I think it's worth a look.

Your Shadow Half Remains is a short but gripping read. It explores themes of isolation, grief and the longing for connection as well as the normalization of horrible situations and how we adapt. We follow Riley well into a sort of pandemic where looking into someone’s eyes leads to madness, violence, and death. Having moved to an isolated cabin she is surviving in isolation with drone deliveries for any necessities when her solitary existence is interrupted by the arrival of someone new who breaks that routine. At the same time strange things begin to happen. Is it the newcomer Ellis responsible or someone lurking in the shadows?

Being dropped right into the middle of everything that has gone down creates a tension that doesn’t let up. The relationship between Riley and Ellis is something the reader longs for as well as dreads at the same time fearing what will happen as various odd events start occurring that create a sense of distrust. Having an unreliable narrator keeps the reader questioning what’s real; memories, dreams, and events that happen blur together in an almost dreamlike way. The ending is ambiguous and haunting in a way that suits the story well.

Would definitely recommend to readers who enjoyed Bird Box or I am legend. A great read for horror fans looking for something dark and mysterious with layered depth.

I received an advance review copy, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

This book hit! I'm fairly new to the horror genre but this was so fun and totally creepy. The way the main character was gripping the edge of reality and insanity had me hooked. It would be so easy to loose it in a world with no human contact. I really enjoyed the authors writing and can't wait to read more of her work.

One thing I loved about this book is that the reader is plopped right into Riley’s current life, and only given 176 pages to figure out what the hell is going on. This book will not be for you if you like everything laid out for you in black and white right from the jump.

After the puzzle of catching up to Riley’s current situation, the reader follows along as she risks everything to have human contact again after several years of isolation. This book focuses a lot on grief and the things that we are capable of in the name of survival.

Check this one out if you like horror, I Am Legend, post apocalyptic worlds, and unhinged narrators!

**Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the eARC of this creepy a$$ title!**

I honestly didn’t find this scary or even particularly unsettling. It felt like a critique of the rather chaotic response to the COVID pandemic, namely the isolation of quarantine (but dial it up to 11 because you can’t safely be around other people at all). But it also totally fell apart if you tried to dig deeper - like infrastructure would have all but totally collapsed, so no electricity or ordering of food or production of any kind.

Riley was too narratively distant. So as things started to devolve, I felt rather indifferent to her paranoia, which is a big miss when that’s supposed to be the baseline of the fear.

I did like the casual mention of how an Autistic person who generally did not make much eye contact before making eye contact was deadly would have a different reaction than a neurotypical person. (Also liked that said Autistic version was consistently referred to using they/them pronouns even though they never actually appeared on page)

Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
Publication Date- February 06
Publisher- Tor Nightfire, Tor Publishing Group
Overall Rating- 4 out of 5 stars

Review: Review copy given to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This is a novella that packs a punch clocking in at just 176 pages. This book is chilling and at times hard to read but in an expected and good way. Your Shadow Half Remains asks the question of what would happen if we could no longer look each other in the eyes. As a therapist by day, I found this question thought provoking and engaging. I feel like everyone should entertain this thought experiment. With social media being the real pandemic we all face, Sunny Moraine helps us come face to face and look loneliness in the eyes even when it hurts.

I don’t often note trigger warnings for books but with some horror and other specific triggers I think it’s important. For this one you should know there are intense conversations and thoughts about suicide, what it means to be alive, there is body horror, grief and loss of self. These topics are done in a thoughtful and considerate manner that adds to the story. Sometimes with horror I find heavier topics are used just for the shock value. Sunny Moraine uses them to tell the story deeper. You think more when you look someone in the eyes and choose connection. I look forward to reading more by them.

I wish there'd been an excerpt, because no matter how hard I try, I can never find myself enjoying a book written in third person present tense.