The Shadows by Alex North centers around Paul Adams as he returns to the town he left so long ago to be with his mother before she dies.

The plot revolves around a series of brutal murders done by different teen boys over a span of twenty-five years. The first murder was done by Charlie Crabtree, a teenage friend of Paul's. The murder destroys the town, especially since Charlie disappears right after the murder. This sets in motion a series of events which end up affecting Paul's life when he returns. While dealing with his mother's dementia, he realizes she not only kept secrets from him, but he wonders if his mother, and now him, are being haunted by Charlie, and if Charlie actually did what he had tried to do when they were teenagers.

The characters in this novel were not badly written, although at times Paul was annoying in his indifference to his mother. He is in town to be with her when she dies and to say goodbye, but he doesn't really seem to be with her enough throughout the book, instead he wallows in his own self pity of what happened when he was a teenager. He should have spent more time with his mother, and he should have really stopped wallowing in his own feelings. I would have also like a little more from Detective Amanda and Jenny. Both were dynamic female characters, and both could have been more than what they were, Amanda especially since she is important to the story.

That being said, I didn't hate this book.

There were some spots in the novel that I thought could have been removed, and it took too long going through some of the childhood issues Paul had with his friends Charlie, Billy, and James. I don't think we needed as much of the exposition we got about their dynamics. What we did need was a little more about how Charlie behaved, and the dynamics between him and Paul. However, that being said, there were several surprises, and I found two of them to actually be surprising. One of them actually "took me off guard." I did not see it coming, and was not only surprised, but a little sad. I think this first twist was awesome, and then there were several others. Only one of them worked for me, and I felt all of them together were a little much.

I also enjoyed how this novel ended. It wasn't the fright fest that I was expecting, and the main character behaved in a supremely annoying way towards the police (it seemed unnecessary), but the way almost everything closed up was well done. It also left me questioning if there would be a part two because there was a least one huge arm left hanging out there, and the internet never forgets.

2016’s Let’s Be Evil is a movie that doesn’t quite have a specific plot or outline. What it seems to be about is a young woman named Jenny, who accepts a temporary job at a research facility to help care for her ailing mother. While there she is set to watch the children in the facility as they are trained for unspecific purposes.
 
Jenny is a young woman who must find a way to care for her ill mother. She ends up getting a temporary job at this research facility. She is never told what she is doing there, nor what the children she is watching are doing there. Each day she is awoken by an alarm and must wear special glasses to view the augmented reality of the facility she is at. In reality she may or may not be in some sort of virtual reality game. Throughout the movie she tries to connect with the children and feels that she does connect with a young girl named Cassandra. In reality it is all a game.
 
This movie started out very interesting, because as Jenny and her two coworkers do what they are supposed to be doing, they don’t really learn much about what they are doing. Neither does the audience. There are suspicious things that happen throughout the movie, like lights going out, black smoke roaming over a door, and children playing vicious games on Jenny and the other two workers. The audience sits waiting for something, anything, to happen. Then when something does happen, it is both expected and unexpected.


At the end of the movie, I can’t say I was shocked. I found that the entire idea of the movie changed with the end of the movie. I didn’t think the ending was a good one, and it was frustrating to see the movie ending like it did. It was one of those movies, one where you find out at the end that the movie was just a dream. This was just like that, except it wasn’t a dream, but it was close to one of those stupid movies.
 
Now, I don’t mind a twist at the end of a movie, but I really think directors should try to make things more interesting, and stop with the ambiguous or circular endings of movies. Please, I’m begging all of you directors and producers and writers out there, stop writing the same ending in different cities and realities for all of the movies out there. Try being original! I don’t need another twist to another movie that tells me that none of it really happened at all. I’m so over that!
 
So, did I like this movie? Yes, until the end. Was it worth a watch? Yes, until the end. Should you watch it, I mean, if you don’t mind something that seems like it will be a good movie that craps out in the end? Yeah, go ahead, it’s not a long movie, and it is free on a few streaming services.