Murder Month 2019 - The Shape of Night

• Title And Author: The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen
• Publisher: Transworld
• Physical, eBook or Audiobook: eBook
• Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: eBook gifted by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review/reaction
• Length: 288 Pages

Have you guys ever watched Grey’s Anatomy? If I said to you “ghost sex”, you’ll know what episode and storyline I’m talking about, right? Ok, keep that in mind while I do this write-up. 

It’s been quite a long time since I read a Tess Gerritsen. I tried to read Playing With Fire when that first came out, but couldn’t get past the first few pages. I never warmed to it the way I warmed to Tess’s Rizzoli and Isles series (I plan to reread one or two of them in the coming few months so keep your eyes peeled for those). So, when I saw The Shape of Night on NetGalley for review, I jumped at it, making sure I didn’t read anything about it. I wanted to go in as blind as I could. 

Ava arrives at Brodie’s Watch, she thinks she’s found the perfect place to find writing her cookbook. And the perfect place to hide from her past - something awful happened. Something she’s desperate to forget. 

But the old house that Ava plans to stay in till October welcomes and repels her and soon, Ava can’t scare the feeling that she isn’t alone… But is she? Is she in danger? If so, is the danger outside the house, inside the walls, or inside her own guilt-ridden head?

When I requested this and dived into it, I thought I was getting a thriller. Like I said, I went into this as blind as I could so no reading the write-up. But Shape of Night isn’t a thriller, it’s a paranormal suspense. So, it was completely different from what I was expecting. 

And because it wasn’t what I was expecting, I’m not expecting sure how to review it. 

On the one hand, it was a nice platter cleanser of a read. If you have looked at my last few reads, most of them have been quite heavy reads for me and I needed something light and this was a fun read. I read it at speed and was surprised how fast I was reading it. It was fun. And sometimes, you need to read something fun. 

But I could never get away from the ghost sex of Grey’s Anatomy. How silly and bonkers the novel got. I mean, if it was me, I would have left that house the first night I was there, but not Ava. Even though creepy and slightly weird things are going on, Ava stays! 

And then there’s the plot. Yes, it was fun, but I saw every twist coming. And I mean, every twist. Now, I don’t care if I see the twists coming or not in stories, but I would like to have a few “I didn’t see that coming!” moments. And that never happened. I guessed everything right. 

Now, a few of you will wonder what this book is meant to be. A gothic paranormal suspense (I am not calling this a thriller as, in my opinions, thrillers are meant to be more faster paced, and Shape of Night was very slow in pacing)? Erotica (the number of times I saw the words “nipples tighten” or “the wetness between my leg” made me roll my eyes)? A murder/stalker mystery? It’s a weird mixture of the three as, while some elements worked, others just didn’t. 

While I did have a blast reading this, it wasn’t Tess Gerritsen’s best work. but it has made me excited to go back and reread some of the Rizzoli and Isles novels that I got on my kindle during a kindle sale.