The Watchers

The characters were wooden, the narrator was boring, and while I was mildly intrigued by the Watchers themselves, I didn't care what was going on, why, or how. Just bored.

The face she had deemed worthless to the artist had been stolen.

you know when you can feel the twist approaching, but it's still fun to watch it unfold?

I think there's a good story here. I just wish someone else had written it.

Everything is so padded that you can pretty much skip every other paragraph and miss nothing. The narrator is inconsistent. Incorrect grammar crops up. The random, improper uses of passive voice are jarring. Oh, and if I have to read, “the yellow one” one more time...

Once you pick it up you won't be able to put it down!

3.5

Ugh, this book. 

At times it felt like it was written by ChatGPT or something. I don't literally think it was, but there is some very strange use of language in here. Not strange in an interesting way, strange in an irritating way.

Also, Mina calls the parrot “the yellow one” for some reason? Very odd.

I did keep reading. I wanted to find out what happened, so I guess this book has that going for it. I ended up skimming large chunks of useless text to get to the end, and I was annoyed and bewildered the whole time. This could have been much better with an editor's heavy hand.

I liked this book and the story well enough but I just think it was too long. 

I really struggle with Shine's writing style - he tries too hard to make it sound literary, overuses the passive in totally inappropriate places and chucks in far too many similes (although thankfully not as many as in his second novel). His characters are one-dimensional and lack any common sense. This was a real slog to read. ⭐️ 1.75/5⭐️

It was good, especially the end. I just wish it was even a tiny bit scary. I wouldn't categorize this as horror at all.

This is an excellent book for those who want some dark creature horror reading material with nice twists for the holiday season. The main character, Mina, lives in Galway, Ireland. She is a young artist, without a steady job, making enough money selling a few commissioned paintings and occasionally making a killing gambling at cards in order to afford her rent and keep her in booze and cigarettes. Her passion is sitting at public places drawing in her sketchbook the faces of people she finds interesting in the passing crowds. When a boozy friend, Peter, hits her up at the local pub to sell an expensive golden conure parrot to a friend and split the take, Mina sees a chance to make some extra holiday cash and agrees, using Tim's hastily drawn map, to drive the parrot to the friend who lives in a desolate part of the Connemarre countryside. After getting helplessly lost, her car then stalls just outside a dense, dark winter forest. With night falling, one horrific shriek comes from the forest, and Mina, locking the doors, beds down in the car until morning. The next day Mina with the caged parrot traverses the cold, dark forest looking for help. As the short winter day begins to wane Mina sees a tall thin woman standing in an open lit doorway of a compound wildly gesturing for her to hurry. As she runs into the lit room and the woman slams and locks the door behind her, Mina will soon realize she has entered into the nightmare world of the watchers, underground monstrous forest creatures who come out at night looking for prey. She joins a ragtag group of two women and a young man all trapped in a compound that keeps them safely behind a lighted, glass partition away from the roaming packs of creatures outside. At night in the glaring room light the glass reflects their image back to them, but the creatures on the other side can see and watch them. Mina and the others have to now try to survive on what little food and water they can gather from the almost impenetrable forest during the day. But they must be back in the compound before the light comes on at night or meet a horrible fate outside. Answers to questions remain to be discovered about the origins of the compound and the underground creatures. And, can Mina and the others ever hope to escape the dark forest? Taking Irish folklore to a very dark place, A. M. Shine has written a horrifically creepy, fast paced, suspenseful tale that also includes some twists that catch the reader off-guard and leave a lasting impression.

DNF @ 65%