Reviews with content warning for Death - The Shuddering

Please please please give this book a read!! It is unexpectedly tense, gripping and horrific. Once you get into the groove it is hard to put down! An excellent book for a cold and snow time of year.

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rachel_darling's review

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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hayleighlouise's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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entanglednovels's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

A satisfyingly creepy read. Unfortunately for this book, one of my favourite video games is very similar to it in both plot and characters. I'm not going to name the video game since that will give away so much of this book - that's how similar some of it is. But if you know, you know.

The Shuddering was published a few years before the video game was released, so it's suffering the unfortunate reality that I read it second, and thus compared it heavily to the game. There are definitely some major differences. The Shuddering doesn't name this enemy that hunts our heroes of the story. The characters are also older, and there's less of them. The video game has another couple of subplots that are resolved halfway to a third of the way through. None of them are present in this book. The ending is also vastly different - depending on how you play the game. So I still enjoyed this, but it did feel like the same story in a different form for the first 50-60%. I've actually tried to find out if the game developer took inspiration from this book, or if Ahlborn worked on the project at all, but nothing that I can see.

I have to say, I was satisfied with the uncertain ending Ahlborn gives us. So many questions left unanswered but in a good way. I loved the characters and think they were well done overall. I'd be happy to read some more from Ahlborn.

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caidyn's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is my first novel that I've read by Ania Ahlborn. Saw that I could borrow it for free on my Kindle and I recalled that I had actually wanted to read a couple of her novels, one of which, if I remember correctly, had been featured as a Kindle First Read a couple months back.

I was very impressed.

This book captured my attention from the start. I loved how most of the beginning chapters told a tale of an encounter with one of the creatures, all of which ended terribly. The main story was definitely tight and I was impressed with the amount of provided back story in the 283 page horror novel. Needless to say, I was very pumped at my decision on this book.

Ahlborn, in my opinion, borrowed from the Wendigo to create her monster. It reminded me heavily of it, minus the hunting in packs if I remember the book correctly. The most experience I have with Wendigos is one episode of Supernatural and the book [b:The Curse of the Wendigo|7775755|The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, #2)|Rick Yancey|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1319724787s/7775755.jpg|10682443] and one other classic book: [b:The Wendigo|1137702|The Wendigo|Algernon Blackwood|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1181290361s/1137702.jpg|2482119]. Not too much, but I remember how creepy it is; a person who turns to cannibalism and is transformed into a creature that needs flesh to survive, preferably human. With that my take on the creature, I think it made me like the novel more.

Since there was so little on the identity of the creature -- which made it more fun to muse about while I was reading -- I'm really not sure if I'm guessing correct or not.

I loved the slow build up to the climax. The ending was a bit like the normal ambiguous ending where you just know what happened without actually reading the words on the page, but it fit with the story. Perfect amount of gore, but not enough for my already nauseous gut to protest about anything; if anything, my nausea went away while I was reading. Characters were solid the whole time, and I enjoyed the bits of depth, no matter how many times I rolled my eyes at Jane and Sawyer until, well, stuff started happening and certain people died.

The one thing I was glad about was Oona, the husky, lasted. I hate reading when dogs die. So I was glad that I didn't have to read anything like that at all.

A four star book, and it was a fun night read. I just suggest to read it in the winter for it to creep you out even more.

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