HE’LL EAT YOUR HEART, EAT YOUR EYES,DEVOUR YOUR SOUL, THEN YOUR LIES,HE’LL MAKE YOU SCREAM, MAKE YOU CRY,AND WON’T LET UP UNTIL YOU DIE… She thinks some sea air and time spent with her mother’s eccentric sister is just what she needs.
Catherine’s past is marred by a terrible secret, however. A secret shrouded in folklore. And it’s not long till Catherine finds herself immersed in a hellish nightmare in which a familiar dark presence unveils itself and preys on her every fear.
Memories of Aunt Lyrica’s daughter, the popular and outgoing teenage-runaway Calanthe Black, come crashing back, and Catherine realises she must piece together the terrifying truth of what really happened to her cousin in the summer of 2003.
Because when Catherine’s teenage sister, Summer, the family’s blue-eyed girl, unexpectedly turns up at the B&B, Catherine – now haunted by ghostly visions – can’t help but wonder: is history about to repeat itself?
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
“This book is many things: Dracula tribute, character study, composition on grief and regret, ghost story and murder mystery. Normally, I’d scoff at a book attempting to be all of these things. However, Dixon deftly navigates through each facet of the story with the ease of a veteran writer. Do you like your horror novels to be dark? And awesome? Then here you go. Grade: A” – Jason Cavallaro, Horror Drive-In
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This is a modern Gothic, haunted house story featuring Lyrica, a middle-aged woman who left an abusive childhood behind, and Catherine, Lyrica’s oft-overlooked niece.
PROS:
This is a scary book and fun to read. In particular, there’s a creepy, awful nun from Lyrica’s childhood. Sister Gregory is not THE monster in the book, but Dixon makes Sister Gregory’s character so real that she is the scariest part of the book for me. As for the monster, the way Dixon keeps the monster lurking in the shadows put goose bumps on my skin. (Not a monster like Godzilla, more of a monster like a bad thing-humanoid.)
I love the way Dixon morphs Catherine’s psyche into a vampire, and Catherine is totally aware of it, too. It’s sick, it’s frightening, it’s sad, it’s fantastic.
I like an eerie, Gothic description, and there are plenty, but Dixon never carries them so far that you get tired of the dark shadows or the gloomy weather.
Like a stone rolling downhill, the story starts off with a little shove to get the stone going, then the momentum grows, and the story is unstoppable by the three-quarter mark. Perfect pacing.
CONS:
I can’t think of any. But if you’re looking for lots of action and fight scenes (because there is a monster in the book), you’d be disappointed. Instead, there are introspective women, emotional manipulation, and insanity.
OVERALL:
Oh, I enjoyed this book. Five creepy stars!
4.5 stars!
THE SHADOW OF A SHADOW, by R.H. Dixon, is a psychological horror novel that will have your mind whirling in multiple directions at once. There are mysteries upon mysteries, horror both psychological and mental, and more than a hint of the supernatural. Throughout it all, however there’s a certain beauty to the words–at times, almost a lyrical prose–that deceives the reader on the surface.
“. . . anything can exist in the dark, even things that are unimaginable . . . ”
The beginning shows us a horrible “orphanage” run by a sadistic nun. Through the eyes of two sisters, the terror here was palpable. It was all too easy to feel the heavy atmosphere of despair and realize how easily a crippling fear could take hold.
“. . . She had no option but to think they were all bitter and twisted psychopaths who hid their evilness behind the black shrouds of godliness they wore . . . ”
Fast forward into the future. After the death of her estranged mother, Catherine goes to the Bed and Breakfast that her Aunt–who she’d always felt more at home with than her own mom–owned. However, dark mystery abounds here as well. Whether it always did, or whether it began with the disappearance of Cat’s cousin, Calanthe, sixteen years prior, is the question.
“. . . you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself . . . ”
The characterization is phenomenal here. In Catherine, we have a troubled young adult who never really felt that she fit in anywhere. Her thoughts may seem unreliable, but is that because of her own mental trauma, or a sinister presence that may have attached itself to her family?
As we travel back and forth with her memories, we are given glimpses into the pertinent issues that have shaped the present.
“Or was the darkness a consequence of my own fear?”
The atmosphere varies from light-hearted–with Aunt Lyrica’s accepting and loving demeanor–to uncertain, fearful, and even terror-inducing on occasion. The novel reminded me of a puzzle, in that we would get individual pieces to mentally put together, trying to make out the full story in our minds.
“. . . It’s not the bogeyman you should fear . . . There’s worse evil among the living . . . ”
Overall, I feel that Dixon did a great job in creating a story that brings us sympathetic characters, mysteries that cover generations, and a supernatural touch in the form of a shadow–with teeth.
Catherine’s emotions are so vivd that I felt like I was experiencing them myself. When she reminisced about past events, the pull was so strong that I could have been standing beside her at the time.
Dixon examines the depth of fear–both experienced first hand, and by nightmares passed down as absolute certainty.
“I wasn’t even a shadow . . . I was the shadow of a shadow . . . ”
Even reading this in the safety of your own home, you may begin to notice the shadows in a whole new way . . .
Recommended.