In the Shadows by J.A. Owenby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When you finally meet the monster hiding under your bed.

One, two, I’m coming for you.
She’s my obsession.

Three, four, kneel on the floor. 
I want to possess her in every way. 

Five, six, I’m up to my old tricks. 
She knows me as The Portland Serial Killer.

Seven, eight, lay in wait. 
Little does she know I’m watching her.

Nine, ten, never to be seen again. 
Welcome to your worst nightmare, Little Lamb. 

Who am I? Let me introduce myself. 
I’m Death. And I have found my Queen.

Ella McCloud you’re the flicker of light in my dark, dark world. 
The color in my grayscale existence. 
I yearn for you like the night yearns for the stars.

In the Shadows

Interesting!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🩵🖤❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: ☹️☺️😍😄
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

The Heroes:
Death – Death is known as the Portland Serial Killer. He usually picks out his victims and slices and dices them with a knife, ridding the world of awful people. When he saw Ella a year ago, he knew he had to have her and not like the others. He didn’t want to kill her; he wanted to keep her. He has been obsessed with her; stalking her ever since, though now he has escalated to sneaking into her house while she slept.
Sebastian – he is Australian and a nightclub owner. He is forty years old and when he first meets Ella at his bar, he is attracted to her, but thinks he might be too old for her, since she is probably in her late twenties. He also thinks his life may be too dangerous for her; he has his secrets as well.

The heroine: Ella Mcleod – she works as a paralegal and rarely goes out and has fun, as her best friend Cami always says. The two of them have been friends for twelve years, they went to college together, and Cami knows almost everything about Ella. Ella had been determined to buy her own home before the age of 29 and she had done it, though since then she had a bunch of medical bills and now is having trouble paying them. What nobody else knew was that she made her side money as a web cam girl.

The Story: Ella does short web cam videos doing things like taking a shower and touching herself. After uploading to the website, she often spends time chatting with some of her best customers when they pay extra for it. One night she is offered $50,000 to join Shadow Whisperer, one of her best customers at a sex club. He says he has very particular tastes and would only watch at first. Ella is desperate to pay the bills that are outstanding. The guy says the club is in Seattle and she would go there on his private plane. Ella agreed to do it. She found out later that the customer knows where she lives when he said he would send a car for her the following day.

I generally don’t like books where the heroine is any kind of sex worker. I know I shouldn’t look down on people for what they do, but I just don’t like it. I like to see a heroine that I can relate to and I can’t relate to someone who does something like that. Though one thing I really liked about this story was the fact that I had no idea where it was going at the beginning. Things kept happening that surprised me. I kind of figured that Sebastian and Death might be the same person, but then I wondered who was Shadow Whisperer? Also, I thought it didn’t make sense for Sebastian and Death to be the same person because Sebastian seemed like a workaholic, and it would seem to be time consuming.

I usually like serial killer romance, but I didn’t like the way Death treated Ella, and I didn’t like the way Ella capitulated for him and acted like she liked what he did to her, when in reality she should have been terrified. Not to mention the fact that she was really liking Sebastian, so you would think a stalker would turn her off. I kind of like the psycho in love trope more when the psycho is sort of funny and not so serious about his fetishes.

This audiobook was told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by John Hartley and Celia Stone. John Hartley has a deep, gravelly voice and he speaks in a kind of loud whisper, which is perfect for the character of Death. He also does a great Australian accent for Sebastian. This is the first time I have heard him narrate and he did a terrific job. Celia Stone has a nice voice but isn’t that great at doing different voices for different characters. Though she did do a good job at the Australian accent.

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