This is a debut suspense book and it had some great chills. A cross between King, Koonze, and Straub. Interesting characters and several twists. Don't want to say much about the story to spoil it for others. I'd read his next novel too.
A plot synopsis makes this book sound like everyday horror. Ghosts, witches and their familiars, same old same old. Think again. Irwin's characters have a depth that makes them real, and adds an extra depth of horror to events. And the horror elements are very well done. If you have a certain phobia (and maybe even if you don't), there are scenes that will give you the shudders, and images that will stay with you for a very long time.
I found this story a little too off the wall for my taste. I did skim to the end to see how it ended, but I would not recommend it.
A strange book indeed, but had a very unique storyline. I had this feeling throughout the whole book of wanting more, wanting it to go in another direction.
Our main character Nicholas, has a gift. That gift is of seeing ghosts. He only sees ghosts of people at the moment that they have died. He sees how people are killed or murdered and it replays over and over and never stops, until he leaves the scene of the tragedy. His wife dies in the bathroom, after hitting her head on the tub. He spends one night watching her die over and over again. Through all of this, I wanted him to use this special gift to travel the world, helping the police or family members, find victims and the places of their deaths. In this way he is then able to tell what has indeed occurred with a victim. It never goes this way of course.
Nicholas is haunted and harassed, as well as the whole town, by an evil witch with a horrid, monstrous spider, who does her bidding. Every so many years a person is killed usually a child, going back over 150 years and the story is the discovery of WHY? Why is, has, was this happening.
I did like the book and I give it 4 stars, not a big 5 because I feel the storyline had soooo much more potential, even though it was still a unique one: "Only seeing ghosts at the moment of their death"...
I loved the imagery and the descriptions and Id like to type my favorite one here from the book..."The rain had finished, and the clouds were leaving like concert-goers after the final curtain. A beautiful night: chill and clear, moonless, the sky was a dark glass scrubbed clean and waiting...house lights switched off one by one, two by two, by the dozen, until it seemed only the bright pearls of streetlamps strung their beads around the dark folds of the slumbering suburb...tiny streams chuckled in the gutters and fell with the dark gurgles into storm water drains to rush underground toward the nearby river..only the trees sang softly their night-breeze song, whispering.." THIS IS WHY I loved the book. The writer was able to capture a moment I could truly visualize and almost feel, taste, smell ect..This book was a very good read but it is one where you really need to pay attention and try and take everything in.
Our main character Nicholas, has a gift. That gift is of seeing ghosts. He only sees ghosts of people at the moment that they have died. He sees how people are killed or murdered and it replays over and over and never stops, until he leaves the scene of the tragedy. His wife dies in the bathroom, after hitting her head on the tub. He spends one night watching her die over and over again. Through all of this, I wanted him to use this special gift to travel the world, helping the police or family members, find victims and the places of their deaths. In this way he is then able to tell what has indeed occurred with a victim. It never goes this way of course.
Nicholas is haunted and harassed, as well as the whole town, by an evil witch with a horrid, monstrous spider, who does her bidding. Every so many years a person is killed usually a child, going back over 150 years and the story is the discovery of WHY? Why is, has, was this happening.
I did like the book and I give it 4 stars, not a big 5 because I feel the storyline had soooo much more potential, even though it was still a unique one: "Only seeing ghosts at the moment of their death"...
I loved the imagery and the descriptions and Id like to type my favorite one here from the book..."The rain had finished, and the clouds were leaving like concert-goers after the final curtain. A beautiful night: chill and clear, moonless, the sky was a dark glass scrubbed clean and waiting...house lights switched off one by one, two by two, by the dozen, until it seemed only the bright pearls of streetlamps strung their beads around the dark folds of the slumbering suburb...tiny streams chuckled in the gutters and fell with the dark gurgles into storm water drains to rush underground toward the nearby river..only the trees sang softly their night-breeze song, whispering.." THIS IS WHY I loved the book. The writer was able to capture a moment I could truly visualize and almost feel, taste, smell ect..This book was a very good read but it is one where you really need to pay attention and try and take everything in.
