I’m sorry. I was too busy to finish a book for today. That’s one reason I’m happy Sandie Herron sent this review of an audiobook, Tess Gerritsen’s The Shape of Night. Thank you, Sandie.
The Shape of Night
Written by Tess Gerritsen
Narrated by Hillary Huber
Unabridged Audiobook
Brilliance Audio (10/1/2019)
Listening Length: 9 hours 22 minutes
Ava Collette is running. She escapes the summer heat of Boston to rent an old mansion in a small Maine village. Perched on a cliff overlooking the sea, Brodie’s Watch is newly renovated and foreboding. Ava hopes it will provide the solitude she needs to finish a cookbook she is writing. She finds it difficult to focus, drinking too much to forget a tragedy that occurred on New Year’s Eve. Her only companions are the Maine Coon cat she brought with her and the workmen finishing renovations to the turret.
When Ava begins hearing sounds, she chalks up the noise to mice, especially when her cat catches several. Her visit to town for mouse traps introduces her to several residents including the town’s doctor who takes a shine to her. She is present when a local fisherman brings in a female body he inadvertently pulled in with his catch. Returning home, Ava continues to hear strange noises and begins to see things at night. When she sees what looks very much like a flesh and blood man in her bedroom, she visits a professional ghost hunter. Doubting her own sanity, she begins to wonder why the woman renting Brodie’s Watch before her left in such a hurry, leaving no forwarding address, and not returning to her usual residence in Boston.
What seemed to appear as a ghostly apparition turns into a warm, human male who claims to be Captain Jeremiah Brodie. Since Ava is staying in his home, he demands that she submit to him and be punished. In her fragile state of mind, Ava agrees with his domination and bondage. Unsure whether her nights with Brodie are real or dreams, she craves the ghost over the town’s doctor who pursues her. There is a secret the town’s people don’t readily share with Ava. For over a hundred years, any woman who has lived at Brodie’s Watch has died there. Is the man in Ava’s dreams really Captain Brodie, or is a killer on the loose?
Writing this description makes the book sound appealing, and in many ways it was. Perhaps Tess Gerritsen is so good in her writing as to make the entire book unfold so easily. However, the plot took far too long to reach any real level of suspense. The plot took far too long to reach any action of interest. Ava almost turned away from Brodie’s Watch upon her arrival, and that foreboding echoed throughout the book. The bondage and punishment aspect of what could have been a ghostly romance pushed the book over the edge. I almost didn’t continue, but I felt I owed Tess Gerritsen enough to finish, and I did. The action picks up at the end of the book. Several mysteries coalesce leaving Ava very much in danger by both real and ghostly forces. But by then, the action was too predictable and formulaic for me to care. A real disappointment.
