"The Shadows' by Alex North was a truly gripping, creepy crime novel that had me guessing about the ending all the way through. Upon first appearance I assumed it was going to be more scary/thriller, having me only read it in the daytime. What I got was something that resembled, to me, like the show "Broadchurch". Strong characters, learning of their pasts and how that shapes into the crime that's being solved at the moment. There are wonderful elements of suspense as well as many surprises that you don't see coming that are well crafted into the novel that even if you happened to look ahead you wouldn't be able to get it spoiled for you. I will admit there are some lulls in the book but I found by the time I got to the end that the lulls were incredibly important as they revealed so much that the reader needed to know by the end. I will warn, there are graphic descriptions of crime scenes but for me, a fan of that kind of stuff, I devoured this imagery. North's way of writing imagery really had me in the woods with the characters and able to physically picture each and every one of them so clearly. I can't wait to go back and re-read this one day and see what all I missed.