A Review - Stay In The Light - A.M.Shine


Firstly, I’d like to thank A.M. Shine, Head of Zeus and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Stay in the Light in exchange for an honest review. Secondly, I’d like to apologise to A.M. Shine, Head of Zeus and NetGalley for the incoherent mess that is about to unfold.


I loved this book, I loved it like I loved The Watchers.

I’ll admit I was apprehensive going into this as so often horror books lose their scary edge once that initial climax has been reached and faded again in the first book. There’s no denying that the book does have a slow start but that isn’t without reason as we start to unpack just how the events of book one have impacted the lives of Mina and Ciara. If you find the start a bit slow for your tastes I would implore you to persevere, it’s around the 25% mark that things start to ramp up, and boy do they ramp up.

A.M. Shine has developed the perfect concoction of horror for me, it has all the insurmountable terror of superhuman killing machines, the horror comes at you in waves so as to never lose its potency and it has my favourite horror device of all time, uncanny valley. The most difficult scene of the entire book for me to read alone plays heavily on this as Mina is first reunited with The Watchers in deeply unsettling fashion.

Initial pacing issues aside this book does not miss a beat as you’re dragged from chapter to chapter. I found myself unable to put this book down at times and too scared to pick it up at others.

There isn’t too much to be said for the characters other than it’s more of that same old recipe we know and love from The Watchers, Mina and Madeline are back like they never left, along with some new faces in an interesting new multi POV approach.

This book has everything I’d ever want from a horror novel. It’s gripping, it’s tense, it’s unsettling, it has an absolute moron doing all the things that we know he shouldn’t do but he doesn’t know not to do, it has a monster eating a croissant, it has seagulls referred to as white feathered hooligans (honestly this book is actually quite humorous in dispatches) and most importantly it has a set up for a third book.

I’m excited to see what comes of this terrifying world of Irish folklore A.M Shine is developing and I hope you all enjoy this as much as I did.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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