What do You think about Within The Shadows (2005)?
This is one of those horror novels that has a difficult time staying in the genre. I found myself on at least a few occasions chuckling out loud about something that was happening in the story, when it was supposed to be making the hairs on my neck stand on end. The characters are fairly fleshed out and the dialogue is very realistic; but the author has the tendency of using this same phrasing to describe the gesture of the protaganist of the story; "he drew his hand across his face." He says this so frequently that I found myself getting pulled out of the story every time I ran across the phrase. I would expect a published author to be able to come up with, at the minium, variences of the phrase. Not a great book, but not bad either.
—Luciano
Here is another excellent example for why I always give an author a second chance. I didn't enjoy the first book I read by Massey, but Within the Shadows was much, much better. The characters were unique and well fleshed out. The Psycho Chick (aka the villain) was a bit too psycho for me and I wondered why Andrew (the MC) didn't pick up on it sooner. She was sweet, and played a good game of hard to get before reeling him into her warped world, so I enjoyed her even with Andrew's warning instincts being overridden by his sex drive. Two things bugged me. Andrew pulled his hand down his face over and over. I get that this is a nervous tick of his, and I even get the connection that his dad did it too, even though they didn't spend time together, but it was distracting overkill. The second part that didn't sit right was Andrew and Cameron's relationship. They have a long-established friendship with hints of underlying love/lust, but something always felt flat or missing between them. (Now those of you that read my reviews regularly know that M/F relationships tend to not live up to my expectations anyway, so as I always say... grain of salt and shot of tequila, dear readers.)Overall, it was a good horror story with some interesting history behind how Psycho Chick went bad and how she did the things that scared and harmed the characters.
—Pia Veleno
