Review: The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen

I've been a fan of Tess Gerritsen for years and I love her Rizzoli & Isle crime series. Reading the blurb for The Shape of Night, I thought this book might be a return to the romantic suspense Tess used to write. I was partly right; the story is an interesting mix of domestic thriller and ghost story.

Something terrible has happened in Ava's past, something so bad she has cut herself off from her family and rented Brodie's Watch - a spooky old house, high on a cliff, once owned by a Victorian sea captain. But Ava begins to get the feeling the house really doesn't want her there. But does she have more to fear from the living than the dead? Or is the weight of her guilt causing her to slowly lose her mind?

The Shape of Night is basically The Ghost and Mrs Muir meets Fifty Shades of Grey. I did enjoy the story and I read it very quickly because I was so keen to find out what happened! But this is the kind of ghost story where the ghost is real enough to chat and romance the heroine. I much prefer jump shocks! I loved the 'small town murder mystery' vibe, the gothic house and Ava's cute cat, but I really didn't like the BDSM bits, which I felt came over as abusive rather than erotic (this might be what the author intended). And if you've read a lot of crime books, the villain is easy to spot.

Although I enjoyed the story and I'm happy to give it four stars, I'm not sure what kind of reader to recommend this book to. Perhaps fans of cosy mysteries who don't mind a ghost story and a bit of BDSM? The closest thing I've read that compares would be While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt, although The Shape of Night is not as dark.

I was lucky enough to receive an early copy of The Shape of Night, which will be published in the UK on 3rd October 2019.

Thank you to Tess Gerritsen and Bantam Books (Transworld/Random House UK) for my copy of this book, which I requested from NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

Review: The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

The Greatcoat is half ghost story, half poignant love story, but if you are expecting to be half scared to death you are going to be disappointed. There are no jump shocks here.

It is 1952 and middle-class women were supposed to give up work when they married. Isabel spends her entire day cooking meals for her GP husband and trying not be be fobbed off with fatty cuts of meat from the butcher - a completely alien lifestyle to me living in the 21st century - I actually snorted out loud when her husband suggested they got a cleaner in to help her out!

The two-roomed flat they are renting (from a very Mrs Danvers-ish landlady) is freezing. In an effort to keep warm, Isabel uses the old RAF greatcoat she has found in a cupboard as a blanket. It doesn't take long for the original owner (Alec) to make an appearance, tapping on the window like a vampire from a horror movie, and it's not just his greatcoat he's after!

There is a lot of historical detail about life in the early 1950s, and that of an RAF pilot during the war, but the most chilling scenes are when time seems to slip. Occasionally Alec realises life has moved on without him before his mind resets, and Isabel glimpses Alec's long-lost world superimposed on her own. It reminded me of Tom's Midnight Garden and The Time Traveller's Wife.

There are a few twists I didn't see coming, mainly because I wasn't expecting them. I'd been lulled into believing this was a nice little paranormal romance, but the final scenes are genuinely chilling, along with the revelations about Alec's death and the reason for his return. 

This is a lovely ghost story, which I thoroughly recommend, although it is more poignant than frightening.

About the Author

Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire in 1952. She won the first Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Baileys Prize) for her novel A Spell of Winter. She wrote about the Siege of Leningrad in her 2001 novel The Siege, which was described by the historian Antony Beevor as 'a world-class novel'. It been translated into more than twenty languages. Her 2014 novel The Lie focuses on the trauma of the First World War and its aftermath through a group of three characters who come of age during that war. The Lie was a Sunday Times bestseller. She is also a poet, short story and children's writer. Her 'Ingo' series of novels for children has been published around the world.