In Her Shadow turned out to be a very different book than I was expecting, which isn't necessary a bad thing. The blurb describes it as the story of a woman, Jessica, whose sister died four years ago. She always accepted it as an accident but when her daughter starts behaving strangely, she wonders if it might have been murder instead.
This is still definitely a thriller but the strange behaviour the daughter experiences gives the whole story more of a horror edge as she appears to be communicating with the ghost of Jessica's sister. This is the main bulk of the story and I was a little surprised that it wasn't more explicit in the blurb. Most of the tension and uneasiness comes from never being quite sure if her daughter really is communicating with a ghost or if there's something more sinister at play.
On the whole, this is a decent thriller and has a plot with some interesting elements and a solid sense of tension. Unfortunately I felt like it had a couple of flaws which stopped it being much more than that. Firstly, it is pretty long for a thriller and I felt like it could have been cut down without losing much. Perhaps more importantly, the ending suffers greatly as it falls into the folly of having every character suspected in turn, meaning when you reach the actual suspect you are not surprised because they are literally the only character left who hasn't been dismissed. This makes for a dull and tedious ending as you can tell by the pages left when it is a fakeout reveal.
Elements I liked however: the characters were pretty good. In particular I liked learning about Isabella, the dead sister, and I felt she was a very unique and interesting character to read about. Her job as a sexual therapist was something I've not seen before and it was handled extremely well. I also liked Jessica's relationship with her daughter and that was written very well compared to a lot of thrillers. Her daughter felt like an actual part of the story rather than a plot device that disappears whenever she stops being immediately important.
Overall, there was a lot going on in this story and I appreciated the depth and focus given to some of the side characters and plots. I think it was a shame about the ending as I was enjoying it a lot more until then, and I think trimming that down would have also helped with the overall feel of the book being too long. There is some nice creepy imagery and good characterisation to be found here, it's just a shame that some of the elements fell a bit short.
Overall Rating:
No comments:
Post a Comment