A review by withyly
The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen
2.0
I'm a huge fan of Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series, as well as a couple of her standalone books. It was a surprise one day when I picked up one of her older standalones and it turned out to be romance-- not my thing but no matter, I can read the blurbs more carefully in the future.
This book though? Reading the blurb didn't give it away that there was a bdsm demon who screwed women in their dreams (or some kind of weird reality) and it read like it wanted to be erotica but fell short. To be honest, I've read fanfiction that did this kind of trope better. Anyway, despite the horror/paranormal story it was supposed to be, it leaned far too heavily into the romance department for me but I had faith that there was going to be some kind of good twist so I held on.
I slugged though the first 80% of the book and it truly was a slug because of how dragged out everything was. Gerritsen tried to build suspense by alluding to the fact that Ava did something at New Year's, something that sent her spiralling and trying to get away. While I like to pick up clues and work things out for myself, this got frustrating pretty quickly because it was very much a "I'm not going to tell you because it's a SECRET that I'm ASHAMED OF" instead of "here's a hint, here's another hint, can you figure it out?" It got old pretty quickly.
Not to mention the whole drinking thing. Okay, Ava's depressed and she drinks a lot. All the time. Empty bottles everywhere. Yes, we get it. The constant talk of how much Ava drinks got old pretty quickly too, not to mention how much she wants the bdsm ghost inside her. Sure, he's hot, I get it. But damn, wanting to see him every night and getting wet all the time? It's a no from me. Very much not my kind of thing and again I wish I'd gotten a hint of this kind of thing from the blurb.
Things got interesting in the last 20% when the body was identified and things actually start happening. Or at least, I hoped so. Turns out we don't find out anything more about the bdsm demon, or how Ava rebuilds her relationship with her sister after. There's a difference between open endings and leaving plotlines loose, which is how I feel about these two points. For two very large parts of the story, it was strange that the bdsm demon was just left to do his thing in the house and we saw so little of Ava's sister.
Two stars, glad I got this book on sale because I wouldn't have liked to pay full price for it.
This book though? Reading the blurb didn't give it away that there was a bdsm demon who screwed women in their dreams (or some kind of weird reality) and it read like it wanted to be erotica but fell short. To be honest, I've read fanfiction that did this kind of trope better. Anyway, despite the horror/paranormal story it was supposed to be, it leaned far too heavily into the romance department for me but I had faith that there was going to be some kind of good twist so I held on.
I slugged though the first 80% of the book and it truly was a slug because of how dragged out everything was. Gerritsen tried to build suspense by alluding to the fact that Ava did something at New Year's, something that sent her spiralling and trying to get away. While I like to pick up clues and work things out for myself, this got frustrating pretty quickly because it was very much a "I'm not going to tell you because it's a SECRET that I'm ASHAMED OF" instead of "here's a hint, here's another hint, can you figure it out?" It got old pretty quickly.
Not to mention the whole drinking thing. Okay, Ava's depressed and she drinks a lot. All the time. Empty bottles everywhere. Yes, we get it. The constant talk of how much Ava drinks got old pretty quickly too, not to mention how much she wants the bdsm ghost inside her. Sure, he's hot, I get it. But damn, wanting to see him every night and getting wet all the time? It's a no from me. Very much not my kind of thing and again I wish I'd gotten a hint of this kind of thing from the blurb.
Things got interesting in the last 20% when the body was identified and things actually start happening. Or at least, I hoped so. Turns out we don't find out anything more about the bdsm demon, or how Ava rebuilds her relationship with her sister after
Spoiler
sleeping with her partner (who then drove off drunk, wrapped himself around a pole, fell into a coma and died)Two stars, glad I got this book on sale because I wouldn't have liked to pay full price for it.