I started this book full of hope that it would be brilliant. Unfortunately I found it slow going and drawn out. There were a couple of “wow” moments for me but it didn’t grip me until I got to 81%. The ending was then a bit jumbled with, in my opinion, too many things rushed to tie up. Wasn’t my favourite but I would try this author again.

Loved the Whisper Man so levels of anticipation for this one were high, and it absolutely delivered Some really evocative scenes that brought the small town to life. There's a sinister feel to it early on, and that sense of foreboding builds at a perfect pace until it all comes crashing together. Pretty sure this one is going to fly off teh shelves.

The Whisper Man was fantastic so really happy and excited to have the chance to read The Shadow Friend. I can tell you that expectations were high and they’ve all been met!
Alex North is a master storyteller of darkness. The feeling of fear will leave you reading this late into the night!

After his mother has an accident at home, and is moved in to Hospital , Paul returns to the town where he was brought up but had left many years earlier . He is staying at his mothers house where strange things start to happen . This takes him back to his school days and the reason he left . He along with 3 friends ( the ringleader being Charlie ) experiment with "Lucid dreaming" and trying to control and align their dreams . Paul is not totally happy about this but goes along with it for his best friend James who has been sucked in . They say that it will help them get back at their teacher without it being traced to them . Eventually Paul falls out with them and a murder occurs and Charlie goes missing , Billy is sentenced to prison for the murder and James struggles with life .The story unfolds around the secrets that have been kept and lies told to protect people . Another excellent read from Alex North after The Whisper Man , waiting for more by him .

Different from my usual type of book.
Murder mixed in with the supernatural.
Paul hasn’t been home for 25 years but finally makes the journey to see his mother who has dementia and terminal cancer
Paul 14 and his best friend James becomes friends with Charlie and Billy and things start to go wrong pretty quickly.
A child from their school is killed and Charlie disappears which leads to Paul leaving his home town of Gritten as soon as he can.
Fast forward to current time when Detective Amanda Beck is investigating the death of Michael Price at a quarry and the ground around him is surrounded by hundreds of bloody hand prints..
Is there a link between these murders?
Paul starts to remember his school days and his memories of lucid dreaming which Paul and his friends had been practicing- trying to control and influence their dreams - this is where reality and the supernatural clash head on. Paul finds Charlie’s dream diary in his mother’s house and begins to piece things together about what happened in the past.
Paul searches for the truth about the deaths and the dream diaries and finally finds out what had happened to Charlie.
All the loose ends of the murders and death are unraveled at the end of the book.

Creepy, dark and compelling although you do need your wits about you as there are a lot of characters and the story is far from straight forward. Not quite 5 from me but certainly a good read.

I actually read this book twice. Once, because I was racing through it in a single night to find out what would happen. And then again, more slowly, to make sure I hadn't missed anything and to view it all through the lens of hindsight. That in itself speaks volumes – because I don't generally have time to read the same book twice in a row.

Put simply, The Shadow Friend is an excellent book. It's deliciously creepy. There are twists I didn't see coming, but which make perfect sense in the context of the story. It has hints of the supernatural (though always falling on the right side of suspension of disbelief, with all the more outlandish things having a prosaic explanation) as well as thriller and police procedural. It's also a moving meditation on family relationships and how the past repeats itself ('a scribble, not a line'), plus a fascinating insight into how urban legends are born and the far-reaching effects they can have.

Highly recommended.

I only recently read The Whisper Man, so was delighted when I saw this available on NetGalley. The Shadow Friend is my favourite book so far this year. It is a real thriller, packed with suspense and twists. At the start I thought it was going to be a supernatural thriller, which I’m not a fan of, but it only has hints of supernatural going’s on. It is a great read, which keeps you hooked until the very end. The plot is amazing and not in a million years could you guess how it all ends. The ending had me absolutely gripped and if it was a film I’d have been peeking through my fingers with my heart racing. Fantastic 5 star book

It's been a long time since I finished a book in one sitting, much less staying up at night to do so, This book is brilliant, creepy gripping just totally amazing.

I don’t know why I read this book. The Whisperman freaked me out, yet I loved it. This one is back to the same creepy creepy freaky happenings. I wouldn’t like to live next door to the author that’s for sure. Not even in the same town….haha.

Paul has more than a few ghosts in his past. The skeletons in his closet you might say, which have forced him to stay away from his famliy home. However, he returns as his mum is terminally ill, but he soon finds newspaper reports of a murder, of a time that haunts him still. Why has his mum held on to these snippets of pain from his past?

That’s the big question hanging over the entire novel and the one that keeps you gripped. What did happen back then? Why are things so vivid of that day and why do the ghosts of the past wish Paul to revisit?

Alex North has set his novel in a fictional town called Gritten. This name alone reminded me of Grimm as in Grimm’s fairy tales so that set the tone from the start. Gritten also sounds a bit like a creature similar to a gremlin I thought. Creepy stuff.

This will keep you reading! It is a story about the ghosts of Paul's past which have kept him away from his home for most of his adulthood but which have also resulted in copycat murders. It starts with persuasive descriptions of teenage angst about relationships which come back to haunt Paul when he returns to his mother's house as she is dying and finds she has hoarded newspaper reports of the murder that plagued his teenage years. Then gradually the story brings in other participants from then and the later,related events. The detective.Amanda,is well drawn too. Then the story heads to its dramatic,unexpected ending. This is a terrific story,well told,carefully crafted. I recommend it unhesitatingly.

Another phenomenal book from Alex North. As a thriller, its multiple viewpoints, flashbacks and twists make for an enthralling read, but what really sets it apart is its treatment of characters and setting. A dying village and residents stuck there, or reluctantly returned, give the story another tragic angle and bring home the desolation of the story.

** spoiler alert ** My expectations were fairly high for this book,having read the previous one,which was very creepy.
Unfortunately this time I wasn't slightly creeped out,and that left me feeling that the book lacked a little something.
There was a decent enough story about a man returning home for the first time in 25 years.
How as a school kid,he had got involved with others,and someone died. Horribly.
I'm interested in the whole lucid dreaming thing too.
There were enough twists to keep me on my toes....but I'd still only describe it as good.

Following a book as successful as The Whisper Man must be a tough call but Alex North has done a fine job. The novel started with a powerful punch as we learn of two similar and very bloody murders in two different time lines. The earliest victim is horrifically murdered by Charlie Crabtree and Billy Roberts which we learn after Roberts appears the following day with a blood stained knife and confesses. Charlie disappears and a legend grows around him in Gritten. Twenty five years later Michael Price is stabbed and mutilated and his body surrounded by bloody hand prints. Elliot Hick and Robbie Foster confess. The story is partly told by Paul Adams who had been friends with the first victim and from the point of view of Detective Amanda Beck who features in Whisper Man and I like that we have a repeat character.

I read most of this book with my eyes out in stalks (attractive) and my mouth open (doubly attractive) with the odd exclamation at dramatic moments. In places it is very scary and there are many very visual and extremely breathtaking events. There is a very strong sense of place with some excellent descriptions. The murders take place in Gritten which is a run down, full of misery, on its knees former industrial town which is spiralling downwards economically. It is surrounded by Gritten Woods and it’s here the atmosphere is especially malevolent, it has a Grimm’s fairytale quality, it’s full of dread and foreboding and this is the place where the title of the book comes from. The characters are strong too especially Charlie Crabtree who is scary, provocative, calm, very dominant and powerful. I really like the illusory power of dreams that Charlie creates and the author conveys a nightmarish, dream like quality in the writing. Revelation piles on revelation, one literally took my breath away as it is so unexpected and weird event upon even weirder in this well written and powerful story. I like the way that Paul unlocks the mysteries surrounding Charlie and the end takes us in an unexpected direction.

Overall, I loved most enjoyed of the book, however, although I like the end I don’t love it and it isn’t as dramatic as I expected. That being said it’s still a terrific book and one I have no hesitation in recommending. I have been going backwards and forwards between 4 and 5 stars but because the book is so original and the overwhelming majority is outstanding I’ve settled at five!!

With huge thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Michael Joseph for the ARC.

I was so excited for this book i thought i would race through it in a day like i usually do but i couldn't with this one. The Shadow Friend was so creepy and unsettling i had to keep taking breaks and going to look at pictures of cats to relax. If it wasn't so well written i wouldn't have been so unnerved but the writing in this was amazing. I was right there with Paul in the woods, i could feel his fear and confusion. I was concerned this might not be as good as The Whisper Man but it was just as incredible. Alex North is amazing and deserves all the praise and success he's getting.

From the author who brought the creepy delight that was "The Whisper Man" comes a new story that has similar roots in an urban myth combined with the darkness that lies beneath the surface of a deprived community.

Paul thought that he had put the awful events of his teenage years behind him when he left Gitten, but when he returns to visit his terminally ill mother it seems that he awakens something dark and feral that brings pain and misery to the community. Is this the vengeful spirit of Charlie and 'Red Hands' or something more grounded in reality, but no less tragic? As Paul remembers more about the past, a police detective races to understand what really happened in Gitten's 25 years earlier and solve the mystery of who, or what is committing the current crimes.

It's creepy, fast-paced, full of twists and human emotion. Pretty much perfect actually.

My thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Wow, a wonderfully crafted creepy thriller full of unexpected twists.

The story is told primarily from the point of view of Paul, alternating between today and his teenage years some 25 years prior. As a teenager, he and his best friend were drawn into a group with two other teenagers who regularly spent time together in and out of school until a tragic event changed all their lives forever with one of the group disappearing without a trace.

As Paul returns home as an adult to visit his dying mother, a detective visits the area as a crime she is investigating has striking similarities to the tragedy from years ago. Paul is haunted by the events of the past, especially when strange events start happening around his mother's house.

Nothing is what it seems and there are huge twists and turns in the story keeping you guessing right until the closing pages.

Highly recommended.

The Shadow Friend is an atmospheric creepy read.
Paul returns to his home town after staying away even from his mother, learning she is dying in a local hospice he realises he must now return.
As a child he and his friend James became involved with two other schoolboys Billy and Charlie. Billy was the ringleader getting them to interpret their dreams and compare notes the next day, persuading them they were all having the same dreams and needed to act them out no matter how horrific they seemed. Paul was having none of this, fed up of Billy’s warped views and left the group, not long after walking away a horrific murder of a student occurs with Billy and Charlie confessing. Paul leaves the ares with his mother’s agreement that he will never return, but now 25 years later another murder with exactly the same injuries and scene has occurred, is it a copy cat or something much more?
A good story, full of suspense and twists, though it was to me confusing at times when it moved between past and present, there was a revelation that really surprised me that I wasn’t too sure about, to be honest it overstretched my imagination beyond belief. That said an enjoyable read
My thanks to net galley and publisher for the opportunity to review this book honestly.

Having just read the Whisper man I was excited to read this, and it did not disappoint. It was so creepy, with so many twists, definitely worth reading.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Penguin UK - Michael Joseph, for the ARC.

My Goodness!! What a cleverly-constructed 'nightmarish' thriller. I loved The Whisper Man and The Shadow Friend didn't disappoint.

The main narrative is told from Paul's point of view - as a teenager 25 years ago and present time, alternating between the two.

Paul hasn't been back to Gritten for 25 years, but needs to now as his mother is in Gritten Hospice dying of Cancer. He recalls the memories of his school days where he and his best friend James were drawn into a group with Charlie Crabtree and Billy Roberts. They regularly hike through the woods at the back of their houses - they call them 'The Shadows'. Charlie is obsessed with 'lucid dreaming' - inducing a dream-state whereby you meet, speak and act with fellow dreamers in an altered world - they all share the same dream.
Impossible, Paul thinks, but then Charlie and Billy brutally kill one of their classmates and magically Charlie disappears off the face of the earth. Billy is holding his dream diary in his bloody hands. The murder scene is covered with imprints of bloody hands.

Present day, and Detective Amanda Beck is opening a murder enquiry on Michael Price, found brutally murdered in a quarry in Featherbank. The ground is covered with imprints of bloody hands. Comparing the two enquiries Amanda wonders if this is a copycat killer.
When Paul explores his mother's attic he finds the walls and beams covered with imprints of red hands. He also discovers newspaper cuttings of murders by classmates from four and two years ago. His mother's dying ramblings lead him to reluctantly explore further.
Is Charlie directing his warped lucid dreaming to others, present-day; is he alive?

Paul constantly feels that something awful is going to happen as he talks through his findings with his first love, Jenny Chambers.

The past and present collide as Amanda meets Paul and tries to find connections between the murders.

The truth, with a touch of the supernatural, is gradually revealed. Some things are best not said, some things are best not remembered.

This is a creepy, sinister and atmospheric thriller. Complex and unpredictable. Look out for the twists.