This book was amazing. Hands down, amazing!
Shadows is a very well balanced book. There is a lot of closeness in the novel, family, friends integrating, and when they are you can feel the support and warmth through the page. The hero and heroine come together quickly, and I love how they work together. Everything isn't rainbows and sunshine, they don't always see eye to eye, but their communication is so beautiful.
Now, the villain? He shocked me, and that is hard to do. There are POVs from the villain and I've read books before where the author tries to almost, give their behavior an excuse. They want you to sympathize with the villain, and I don't like that. Unless it's part of the trope, I want the villain to be completely bad. I don't want excuses for their behavior. What I want, is justice, and Kristen gave me that. There were no excuses, no empathy, no sympathizing, and Kristen did not hold back. I cannot tell you the amount of times my mouth fell open in shock, and I mean wide open. My jaw nearly dislocated, and I'm lucky I had the common sense to cover my mouth before something flew in. I literally looked around the room like, did I just read what I just read? It was insane, twisted and captivating. There was almost a poetic style to his crimes and the way he thought, and the quotes from other serial killers really did it for me.
And if that wasn't enough, this book managed to not be predictable for me. I'm good at predicting things. I do it all the time in books, movies, shows. I know who the villain is, why they did what they did, and having to sit there for forty-five minutes to try to "enjoy" the media when I already figured it out is annoying for me. Not with this book. I honestly had no idea who the villain was. I kept wondering, trying to figure it out, and when I finally did find out? I was shocked! SHOCKED! And the twist at the end? And the paranormal and psychic inclusion? The power of the witches? The magic? Everything. Everything was pure perfection and I can promise you that I'm adding the next book to February's TBR if I don't jump ahead and read it right now.
Get the book here: https://amzn.to/3IW7ReW