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Hall
Ways Review: Audio book review. When
I read the book jacket of The Shadow Writer, I let out an audible “oooooh” and knew what I was getting into – a story that would be intriguing, multi-layered,
and dark, as I’ve come to expect from Eliza Maxwell. I am happy to say that I am
right about my initial appraisal (who doesn’t love being right?). However, a
confession is in order: that is about the only thing I got right in reading
this book.
“He smells of salt and
booze, sweat and inadequacy.”
Talk about your complicated,
convoluted, complex characters. Readers are led to make logical assessments of every
character based on the parts we see. It’s like looking through a small hole in a
fence; we’re given only a limited view of the personalities. There are some
shadows looming just outside of our line of sight, and they make us nervous, and by
the author’s design, we aren’t allowed to see the whole picture. We make
assumptions, (many of mine wrong), and we learn that obsession has many disturbing
iterations.
Author Eliza Maxwell is a
master at leading readers astray, and I am a sucker for it every single time. The author wants readers to be as uncomfortable
as her characters seem to be and wants us to be wary. Don’t get too close; don’t
trust; don’t dare to hope for happy endings. Don’t even get comfortable with
the alternating points of view from which The
Shadow Writer is told; we have unreliable narrators and then a couple of highly
informative and disconcerting bonus POVs scattered among the chapters to keep
readers off balance.
“Question everything … But
remember—things aren’t
always what they seem. Trust no one.”
I had to include this quote
because it’s from a scene with a murder mystery dinner. The double entendre isn’t
lost, and the irony of the sub-setting of the murder mystery within the bigger
story is almost stressful for the reader. There are twists and turns and
stories inside of stories, and I found myself exhausted by furiously trying to
figure out what was coming. I failed and failed and failed and finally, I gave up and just allowed the deliciously
disturbing stories in The Shadow Writer
to unfold. Save yourself the trouble and let the plots wash over you.
In a cast full of unreliable
and unbalanced characters, no reader wants to make a connection. We prefer to
sit comfortably at a distance from those people.
Those not like us people. But Eliza
Maxwell’s story reads like messed-up truth we’d see in the headlines, and she
makes it feel real by including lines that, even in the midst of insanity, allow
readers to make connections. A few of my favorites:
“I’d never forgive myself for leaving you
under-caffeinated.”
“Bad coffee she can live
with, but bad cold coffee
is one insult too many.”
“It’s my absolute pleasure to have the honor
of working
around books, and by extension their authors.
It turns out you’re as
lovely as the words
you write and the stories you create.”
“That’s why God created
make-up: to cover fine lines,
dark circles, and regrettable choices.”
“The more a person talks, the less they have
to say.”
In reading The Shadow Writer, the only predictable
aspect is that it’s unpredictable – that’s how author Eliza Maxwell rolls, and
I will go along for the ride any time.
ABOUT THE NARRATION: I
cannot sing high enough praises for the masterful performance of narrator
Karissa Vacker. AMAZING
narration, pacing on point, and Vacker nails the nuances of each character’s
personality – especially that little hint of a mind that’s tinged with
something off. Male or female, balanced or unbalanced, creeper or innocent, Vacker
does them all with panache. I listened
on CDs, which isn’t my favorite format, but as a glass half full kind of
person, it forced me to pause in the story and process what I'd just heard. A warning that on the
final CD, when the story ends, it shows three tracks and some twenty-two minutes
are still left (there's not). That threw me for a loop (I WASN’T READY FOR IT TO END) and made me
panic that I was missing something.
Thank you to the author and
Lone Star Book Blog Tours for providing me Audio CDs in exchange for my honest
opinion – the only kind I give.
