The Company of Shadows

This book was a complete surprise for me since the very beginning. I was surprised when I was told I had won it in a contest I didn’t remember entering, I was surprised when it arrived at my doorstep just two working days after, I was surprised it came in the most comfortable large-print paperback edition, and finally, once I started reading, I was very surprised I was enjoying it to the point I couldn’t put it down. I didn’t know the author, nor did I had the smallest idea of what the story was about, and despite the genre being very different from what I’m used to, I got completely hooked on page one.

So it all starts with the heroine, Kate Grey, waking up on the day of the first anniversary of her husband’s death. She goes show more to see his grave and replaces the dead flowers for fresh ones, sits there for a while stroking the headstone and talking at it, and then drags herself up to visit a couple of friends who just came back from vacations and have a bunch of half-good, half-bad photos to show off the places they have been. And as if nothing else could cause her damage and pain in this particular day, in the background of one of those photos Kate sees the clear image of Charlie: her dead husband. With a new purpose in life, she sets her mind into finding out this man that wears her deeply missed husband’s face, throwing the reader into a mad succession of flights between the UK, the USA, and Sicily in such a way that I kept my passport next to me the whole time, just in case.

I loved Kate. She’s this fierce, outspoken english woman with highly developed protective instincts towards those she loves, which combined with her headstrong I’ll-have-my-way-and-nothing-else type of character, matter-of-factly way of handling life or death situations/decisions, and the skill to read micro-expressions like those guys from Lie To Me, one can’t help but admiring her. But she has a soft side too -a soft, generous, unaffected side only meant to be seen by those same people she’ll go to hell and back to protect. And while at first she may come only as the grieving widow who’s probably imagining things and acting crazy, I advise the future readers of this book to set themselves in awe mode, because Kate is a package full of surprises until the very last page. (Can I just add I kept imagining her the very image of Emily Blunt? Thank you.)

Confession time: I’m one of those readers that love to be told about those little details regarding the character’s behavior, like "I picked up my coffee and took a small sip", instead of "I drank my coffee", and this was one of the things I enjoyed the most about the witty voice of this book, how it would always give away peculiarities of this kind that, for me, makes whatever that is going on seem more real. Truth to be told this reading continuously flashed through my mind like a movie.

And what a great ending Ruth! Didn’t see it coming at all. :D

So, I’m recommending this one to everyone who thinks will enjoy a series of head spinning scenes, enthralling and clever writing, engaging mysteries, perilous situations involving the FBI and the Mob, a beautiful love story that kept warming and shattering my heart along the way -and that for some reason I wasn’t expecting at all from a mystery/suspense type of book-, and a plot that will keep you asking these questions over and over: friend or foe? Dead or Joe?

Review also at Cuidado com o Dálmata - The Company of Shadows show less

This is an intriguing listen. It starts a year after Kate's husband Charlie dies in a drowning of the coast of Sicily while they are on holiday. She see some friend's holiday pictures and thinks she sees her husband in the background. And she's off to Miami to see if the mystery man is her husband, or just a lookalike. The first 2 parts of the book involve at least some element of the story being told with flash backs to when they met, got married and to the holiday itself. It was in the later parts of the book that I slightly lost the plot. Was he dead or not? Was he FBI or the mob? What on earth was his real name? It got a bit silly, but it was good enough that I didn't think of stopping. It all worked out in the end, and there were show more some fabulous character studies along the way. I just felt that sometimes someone would get introduced and used for a particular reason, then dropped. I'm sure if you pieced together who said what at various stages, you'd find some gaping plot holes - it all felt like it wouldn't hang together if really looked at closely. But it zipped along and the lead character was interesting enough that, even when you thought she was being an idiot, you wanted to know how she was going to cope with what turned up next. show less

Everyone loves a good resurrection story so when bereft widow Kate grey spots her late husband in the background of friends’ holiday snaps we all hope, DNA evidence notwithstanding, that Charlie is somehow still alive.

Determined to discover the identity of the look-alike, Kate’s investigations leads to first to Miami and then to Sicily and, just as she is about to abandon her search, a stranger warns her to desist, fueling her suspicions about the veracity of her husband’s death.

Company of Shadows is not only an exciting read it is also a well written excursion down well-trodden paths that while thrillingly familiar, are never clichéd.

Insomma, già l'inizio non convinceva troppo, poi ecco partire la sagra dei luoghi comuni, dove dietro ogni italo-americano si nasconde ovviamente un mafioso, anche dietro gli italo-inglesi si celano famiglie intere di malavitosi e gli agenti di polizia sono tutti dei fessi corruttibili. Ulteriore nota di demerito, oltre al dettaglio non marginale dell'assenza di una trama anche lontanamente credibile, l'effetto mascherina da super eroe: come si fa a dire di amare un uomo e di conoscerlo meglio di se stessi se poi non lo si riconosce perché lui si atteggia in modo diverso?!?! Certo, chi non crede nel 2011 alla storia del fratello gemello segreto che sembra proprio lui ma non è lui...

Hoewel dit een spannend boek was en ik er best van heb genoten vond ik het einde met al zijn plotwendingen een beetje ongeloofwaardig.

Kate Benson is een jonge weduwe die lijdt onder het plotselinge verlies van haar man Charlie. Ze waren elkaars soulmate en nog maar twee jaar getrouwd.

Op een dag komt haar een zeer recente vakantiefoto van vrienden onder ogen - en het lijkt wel of Charlie op de achtergrond staat, heel vaag! Hoewel haar vrienden aan haar geestelijke vermogens beginnen te twijfelen, gaat Kate op zoek, tegen beter weten in, en ze ontdekt een vreselijke waarheid.

Het begin van dit boek schept verwachtingen die helaas niet waar gemaakt worden. Het plot doet gekunsteld aan.