In the crumbling seaside town of Hawksbridge, Shona finds kinship with the eccentric Gifford family living illegally in a derelict building. Their stories of survival give her the courage to paint again-until she discovers a body wrapped in carpet, and everything starts to unravel. Richard knows her secrets. He's documented every shameful detail of her childhood, from the fire she set at fifteen to the deaths that followed.
Now he's weaponizing that knowledge, jeopardizing her relationships and her future. But Shona has learned something important from the misfits of sometimes the only way to break free is to embrace the darkness you've been running from. As New Year's Day dawns, Shona faces a choice that will define who she really is. Because some shadows can't be escaped-they can only be owned.
"I have no idea what you intend to do, And then your shoulders slump, 'It's not worth it, is it, Shona? You're immune to slaps, cigarette burns, insults. It's affection you can't deal with.'"
Struggling artists, queer discoveries, stifling tension and dead bodies — the ingredients for something you just can’t put down.
Our Shadow Selves was a compelling, dark read that felt both gritty and polished all at once - simple but descriptive prose with excellent pacing through short, punchy chapters that clash brilliantly with the slow burn story and a deep sense of foreboding from the very start.
Our main character, Shona, is a starving artist, trying to escape the darkness of her past but running into a new terror - meeting a woman living illegally in a derelict block of flats that was slowly being reclaimed by the ocean. The building itself became a character, a representation of the need to destroy everything to move on, the crumbling of her own life around her, the fear of moving on. She was a beautiful contrast to Richard, an ex of hers offering her a home after a hospital stay - both artists on different sides of society. He was an easily hateable, loathsome creature — expertly written to drawn the venom of anyone reading him.
Pretentious, controlling, slimy, using people as playthings, keeping Shona around to maintain an image of a respectful straight man; the kind of man who you’d read about in the paper as being some kind of predator or killer and saying “yeah, actually, I can see that.”
Shona, and the residents of the Miller building, narrate the story - with unique writing, Shona specifically referring to he darker half, her shadow self in a third person, not part of her, but a being of its own and then narrating her thoughts about Richard directly with “you”. It was jarring at first, when mixed with the mixed perspective and timelines, but settled into a brilliantly windy style that really suited the story and created just exactly the right amount of confusion to make the nerves build.
It falls into a few things that sometimes frustrate me, like the character describing themselves in the mirror and a slightly less thriller content that id expected but overall the writing was wonderful - a skin-crawling, wicked thriller with a cast of suspicious characters.
⭐⭐⭐
- I was gifted a reviewers copy of this title in return for a review - thank you to the RTT team for inviting me to be a part of this tour
- This title contains potentially sensitive content including suicide, abuse (parental/domestic), loss of parents, violence and death.
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