This is easily the worst book I’ve ever read. I tend to think that a lot, but it always seems like another book comes along that’s worse than the last. I think The Shadows has finally taken that title for good. The prose, the characters, the plot… there is not a single redeemable thing to be found here.

As I sit here to write this review, I can’t conjure a single important fact about any character featured in The Shadows. I assuredly couldn’t tell you what any of them looked like, because Alex North doesn’t provide descriptions for any of them. Perhaps it was because of the awful writing, but even the names of the characters grated on my nerves. Paul, Billy, Charlie, James, Jenny… for some reason these just didn’t seem like real names. Part of it, I think, is the fact that a supposed police detective goes around referring to adults as “Billy” instead of “William”, “Charlie” rather than “Charles” etc. There’s also a character whose last name is Goodbold, and I’ve literally never heard of an actual human being with that surname in my life.

Amanda is a worthless, throwaway character that exists only so there’s a secondary point-of-view. She makes stupid, nonsensical choices that no police detective would ever make. She uncovers nothing, does nothing, and makes no significant impact on the story whatsoever.

And that leads me to the plot, and I am using that term very loosely. The Shadows has zero plot for at least 230 pages. Yes, you read that correctly. For the first 70% of this novel, the story does not progress. Nothing happens. Alex North repeats things incessantly in a blatant attempt to pad pages and fill space. Our main protagonist, Paul, ruminates about the same events over and over again. And then we come to the “twist”. The entire premise of The Shadows relies on information that every character in the book knows, but the reader does not. Alex North intentionally hides the fact that Jenny was murdered simply so he can attempt to spring it on the reader at the end. Not only does this make absolutely no sense whatsoever, it’s also infuriatingly stupid. Completely asinine. I cannot stress how poorly written The Shadows is. The prose is bland and amateurish. The dialogue, in particular, is horrifically bad.

I wish I had not wasted my time reading The Shadows. It is not creepy, it is not scary, it is not disturbing. Instead, it is an excruciatingly boring and poorly written insult to the reader’s intelligence. I will not be reading anything by Alex North in the future.