Netgalley Review: The Shape of the Night by Tess Gerritsen

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Publication Date: October 1, 2019

Pages: 288

Genre: Paranormal Mystery

Rating: 2.5/5

The Shape of the Night is a paranormal story following a food writer, Ava, who moves into a New England house for a few months while she works on her latest book. Ava is running from the mistakes of her past and is also trying to figure out what exactly is going on in her house. I really liked Ava’s character for the most part but so much of this story didn’t work for me.

The biggest thing that I didn’t like in this book is the (somewhat) erotica subplot. If you been here for a while you know that I love me a good smut but this was not well done and it also added nothing to the story. There was nothing sexy or interesting about what was happening beyond us learning the way Ava wanted her men to behave in bed. Uh ok but how does any of that move the plot along? It doesn’t and Gerritsen would have been better off building up some of the weaker aspects of the story.

For instance, the mystery element of the book would have been so much stronger if more time had been spent on building up the side characters. There were some interesting people who were either acting shady or had a shady background and yet hardly any time was spent on them. All of that led up to me not being invested in any of them and so when we had the big reveal the payoff wasn’t as great as it could have been.

Also, as much as I liked Ava it became very boring dealing with all her flashbacks to what she did in the past. Especially because it is glaringly obvious from the beginning what she did so why we spent so much time flashing back to that night to just skirt around the issue over and over again was annoying. Present day Ava was a lot better and I really enjoyed the fact that she was a food writer. Everything that she made sounded amazing and I appreciated learning some very interesting food facts.

Overall this story was a mess. Some parts were really enjoyable but the story definitely needed to be streamlined a bit more. If you enjoy paranormal fiction and the food writer aspect sounds intriguing then this might be a book for you to consider.

~Cassie