The Shadows @writer_north @CeladonBooks #psycologicalthriller #luriddreams #teenagers @absltmom

Thanks to Goodreads and my winning this book, I was able to get an advanced look into Alex North’s newest book The Shadows. Having been very much spooked by his The Whisper Man, I was quite happy to once again enter the world of “spookdom” and read this story.

Teenagers are quite impressionable. They often believe a lot of things and try to grab onto concepts and ideas that at times seems quite out of the norm. They often make ready partners, easily led, and make decisions that oftentimes can lead to consequences that are dangerous.

When one of the friends of Paul Adams, led by the malicious Charlie Crabtree perform a heinous murder, the town and its inhabitants are reeling. The extent of the heinous murder fuels talk and over the years also creates a number of copy cat murders. Paul, twenty five years later, has tried to put the death of his friend and the involvement of his other friends behind him. He has escaped his town, but now with the imminent death of his mother, and what seems to be a copycat murder, Paul must return. He returns to the memories, he returns to the place where he vowed he never would, he returns to find all those nightmares reoccurring.

But who was this Charlie Crabtree? How could he influence these boys, making them believe they could live in each other’s dreams, lurid dreams he called them? He was their leader, their malevolent director, who shaped their thoughts to become his own. Twenty-five years ago disaster struck and Charlie disappeared often to be resurrected in the copy cat murders that inhabited the dark net.

There is much that is unknown and yet somehow Paul’s mother, incoherent at times, knows something. Paul realizes that he must find out the truth to his nightmares and embarks on a hunt for the things that have haunted him for years. It’s a terrifying journey that can only end if Paul finds all the answers he is so afraid to seek.

Told with the sinister background of a dark deep woods, this story unfolds through revelations that are ugly and malevolent. It brings up the point that there are indeed evil people in our world and that many of them are the ones who shape a future we find ourselves in.

Recommended for those who enjoy seriously creepy stories that keep the question of “what if” firmly in your mind.