LSBBT BOOK REVIEWAPALOZZA + GIVEAWAY: The Shadow Writer by Eliza Maxwell (Thriller)

Eliza Maxwell’s previous novel, THE WIDOW’S WATCHER, was one of my favorite reads last year, so when I saw her newest book was a thriller involving a book blogger, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on its pages!

As a huge fan of the thriller genre, I have read many titles, and I must say that this one stands up there with many of the more widely known! Featuring unlikeable and unreliable characters with ambiguous agendas and a twisting and completely unpredictable plot, this book needs to find a larger audience in order to spread the word on how amazing Eliza Maxwell’s storytelling truly is! There were moments that I had to stop and reread chapters out loud to fully appreciate how beautiful and multilayered her use of language is, allowing her writing to simply flow right off the page. 

Though filled with subjects and themes regarding murder, manipulation, obsession, and lies, the content is never graphic or gratuitous, but rather the covert nature of the characters’ actions keeps the tension and suspense mounting until the absolute end. Despite being privy to multiple perspectives and personalities, all of which add their own complexities, including a story within the story, you never really have complete access to anyone’s motives or motivations. This all adds to the mounting sense that there is something quite dramatic and unnerving bubbling just under the surface, and it’s definitely going to be explosive when it finally breaks free if in fact it should have been revealed at all. Readers will have to determine that for themselves after reaching the story’s unexpected conclusion.

The best way to enjoy a thriller is by going into it with very little information or understanding. Let this story envelope you like a cozy blanket that suddenly wraps too tightly, yet releases in a dizzying and pulse-pounding fashion only to slowly welcome you into its loving embrace over and over again. What a reading experience this was and one that I look forward to returning to just to make completely sure I didn’t miss a thing! 

Intensely woven and compulsively riveting, this mind-blowing journey is a masterful train wreck of assumptions that I can’t recommend enough! A literary gift from an author that I highly anticipate each year!