The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen
Published by Transworld Books on October 3, 2019
ISBN: 9781473567160
Genres: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Horror, Occult & Supernatural, Literary, Psychological
Pages: 278
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased Book
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'This will haunt you. Riveting!' Shari Lapena, author of THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR
'The Shape of Night is as compulsive as it gets.' Lesley Kara, author of THE RUMOUR
If the walls could talk . . . they'd tell her to leave. Now.
When Ava arrives at Brodie’s Watch, she thinks she has found the perfect place to hide from her past. Something terrible happened, something she is deeply ashamed of, and all she wants is to forget.
But the old house on the hill both welcomes and repels her and Ava quickly begins to suspect she is not alone. Either that or she is losing her mind.
The house is full of secrets, but is the creeping sense of danger coming from within its walls, or from somewhere else entirely?
***
Readers are obsessed with The Shape of Night
***** ‘A creepy, atmospheric thriller that I thoroughly enjoyed.’***** ‘A powerful book that I could not put down but ... I was scared to pick back up!!’***** ‘Twists and turns till the end. Really kept me turning the pages.’

The Shape of Night is a story about guilt and loss.  It tells the story of Ava Collette, a woman that is running from her past.  She distances herself from her family, her work, and predominately her memories.  I don’t think you can outrun your past, you can just maybe stall it for a while.  A food writer that has become hooked on alcohol to deal with her emotions.  It all gets too much and she decides to rent a house, Brodie’s Watch, a large stately home overlooking the sea in a remote coastal peninsula of Maine.  Will it provide Ava with the distance to get her head straight and finish writing her much-anticipated cookery book or is she walking further into the lion’s den?

The Shape of Night is very different from Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series.  For me, some aspects just didn’t work well together.  I love a gothic horror/thriller but whilst reading some scenes I just found myself uttering WTF? BDSM is one of them (I’m no prude, believe me, but it was the combination in which it was utilised that had me scratching my head.)  it was by no means a bad story there were just little niggly things that bothered me.

Once Ava enters Brodie’s Watch she feels a presence, but soon it seems to accept her.  Quickly she comes to realise that some aspects of the house make her feel uncomfortable.  After researching she discovers that the house was built by Captain Jeremiah Brodie.  A seafaring man with a bit of a reputation.  Late one night she is visited by an apparition that promises her safety and things that she never quite imagined.  Her experiences within the house lead her to look into the previous owners more and she is faced with a harrowing decision.  

That said, The Shape of Night isn’t a bad story, not at all.  The storytelling and compelling narrative kept me reading.  I was intrigued to find out what the backstory of the house was and just how that played into the present events.  The unreliable narrator in Ava had me guessing for a while and trying to decide whether the events were occurring or it was all in a drink-fuelled mind.  Some small-town stereotypes just felt a bit too unoriginal. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), The Bone Garden (2007), The Keepsake (2008; UK title: Keeping the Dead), Ice Cold (2010; UK title: The Killing Place), The Silent Girl (2011), Last To Die (2012), Die Again ( 2015), Playing With Fire ( 2015), I Know A Secret (2017) and The Shape Of Night (2019).  Her books have been published in forty countries, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.

Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

She is also a filmmaker.  She and her son Josh have just completed production of a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo. Their previous film, “Island Zero”, is a feature-length horror movie that was released in 2018.

Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

Tess Gerritsen