Reviewed by Dan

TITLE: Shades of Night

SERIES: Sparrow Falls Book 1

AUTHOR: Justine Sebastian          

PUBLISHER:    Self-Published

LENGTH:     340 Pages

RELEASE DATE:   January 18, 2016

BLURB:

In Sparrow Falls, Louisiana, something strange is always going on.

Nick Lange left his hometown behind twelve years ago, dreams of making it big somewhere else looming bright in his mind. What he got instead was a drug habit that led to a long prison sentence for a crime he did indeed commit. Newly released and with nowhere to go, Nick heads home to Sparrow Falls, land of the freakish and the bizarre, with hopes of rebuilding his life in the town he tried to leave behind.

Nick’s quiet new life is soon interrupted when he learns about the newest happenings in town. Since August, things have gotten extra peculiar and not long after Nick’s arrival the murders start. Brutal, senseless killings that leave the victims mauled beyond recognition… and partially eaten. The townspeople whisper that it’s something that hides under the bed or lurks in the closet, waiting and hungry.

Nick, ever the skeptic, says it’s only a man and that’s bad enough because whoever–or whatever–it is, they’ve got Nick in their sights. Nick’s never been one to back down from a fight and that’s a good thing because as the dark gets deeper, it becomes a vicious game of live or die. One that Nick isn’t sure he can survive.

Tick. Tick.

REVIEW:

Wow, this book came to my attention through a recommendation from a friend on Goodreads. I was intrigued when I read the blurb, but I had no idea that the MC and a couple other characters were gay until I started the book and found out.

This book is a true horror story. I would go so far as to liken it to an old-time Stephen King book in my humble opinion. It has all the pieces of a good horror story.

Shades of Night is set in the small-ish town of Sparrow Falls, Louisiana. I think somewhere along the way it said there are 30,000 residents, so not a true small town, but small-ish. The town has a long history of unsolved serial killings dating back years. The corpses are always found completely drained of blood, with flowers in their mouths and other ‘tells’ that show they are all the work of one person. The town has learned to live with them because there has never been any evidence found to point to the killer. This book, interestingly, is not about those killings… they are saved for book two.

Instead, in this book, something new has come to Sparrow Falls. Some sort of vicious animal has been attacking livestock and humans, killing both. The body count is starting to climb. Enter Nick Lange. Nick was arrested and served ten years in jail for transporting drugs across the Mexican border. He has come back to Sparrow Falls, where he supported himself as a male prostitute selling himself to other men when he was a teen. He is back to his old profession, but also working at the local hospital as a janitor, and he totally doesn’t believe everyone’s tales of some sort of animal creature doing the attacks. He is sure it is a man… maybe using some sort of ‘claw’ device to do the killings. But that doesn’t explain the teeth marks and partially eaten bodies now does it?

Is he correct? You will have to read it to find out. It kept me reading late last night and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I closed the Kindle down and forced myself to wait to finish it until tonight.

I highly recommend this book. If you are a lover of horror stories, I believe you will really enjoy this one. It is dark, has some twists, and a lot of carnage. I’ve already downloaded the second book in the series from Amazon after reading the ‘teaser’ at the end of this book. Now I’m off to lose myself in further tales of Sparrow Falls.

RATING:

BUY LINKS 

Amazon