Title: In The Shadows of Children
Author: Alan Ryker
Genre: Horror
Rating:3 stars
Purchase:Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Aaron hasn’t been home since his younger brother mysteriously disappeared without a trace from his bedroom fifteen years earlier. He thought he’d moved on with his life.
But when his mother dies suddenly, he finds himself back in his childhood hometown to attend the funeral and see to the estate. Aaron soon finds his hopes of reliving fond childhood memories evaporating as he discovers something in his old closet that shakes not only his beliefs about what happened to his brother, but his grip on reality.
In the hungry darkness, a shadow as old as time itself has been waiting for his return for a long time. And its wait is nearly over…
In The Shadows of Children is a short novella that focuses on childhood fear. Aaron, our main character, hasn’t been home since his younger brother disappeared from his bedroom fifteen years ago. But when his mother dies, he has to go see the estate and decide what to do with it. But there, he finds something in his old closet that turns his world view upside down and makes him question what happened to his kid brother all those years ago.
The book starts out slow to set the scene. The reader spends a lot of time inside Aaron’s mind, and it’s not all candy and butterflies in there. Aaron is hard to sympathize with at first, but the more you spend time with him, the more you can understand why he’s the man he is today. The book nicely blends supernatural and psychological terror.
The writing is decent, and really, my only complaints are the slow start and how the book wasn’t really scary. The book is also quite short and the story is rather straightforward.
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