Redheaded Reviews: The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen

Ava blames her brother-in-law's death on herself because he was at her house and supposed to stay the night while her sister was at the hospital on-call but he left and she couldn't keep him there that New Year's Night and he drove drunk and died. She slowly pulled away from her sister, Lucy and lost herself in the bottle. She also got behind on writing her book of recipes. So she decided to go to Maine for inspiration to a house called Brodie's Walk where the previous tenant left in a hurry making the rent cheap. Also, two carpenters would be working on the widow's walk and the turret.

Ava is visited by a ghost, Jeremiah Brodie, the man who built the house 150 years ago who was lost at sea. He promises she will get what she will deserve and that no harm will come to her as long as she is under that roof. He knows she has a dark secret and that she did something bad that needs to be punished for and he's just the man to eke out that punishment and the pleasure.

She finds a much-beloved cookbook and an expensive Hermes scarf in the house that belonged to the former tenant, Charlotte, and she tries to send them back to her at her home in Boston but they come back to her. So she drives up to Boston to try to return them to her in person but her neighbor says she's still in Maine. Her only forwarding address is the PO Box back in Maine and they say they don't have a forwarding address for her but that her box is overflowing. On top of that the police have discovered a washed-up dead body of a woman. Could it be Charlotte?

Dr. Ben Gordon, the local catch in town, is interested in Ava, but after nights with Jeremiah will a human man ever be enough again? She goes out with him and tries really hard to like him because he's so nice, but she just can't seem to feel anything. The police believe that the carpenter Ned Haskell is the one who killed the woman found because he was suspected of killing a girl who went missing five years ago.

Ava seeks out the help of a ghost hunter who believes that she needs to leave the house or she'll be trapped there forever until she dies. Cut off from everyone. That the ghost has a type and she fits the bill and the house has a long history of women dying alone in the house.

This is an interesting book that is part ghost story part story of punishment and redemption. Ava is punishing herself for a mistake that anyone could have made and formed an unnatural relationship with a ghost who partly scares the hell out of her. And she can't seem to find her way out of the bottom of a bottle. You feel sorry for Ben who is so nice that Ava isn't giving him a chance. I really loved this book. It lives up to Gerritsen's previous great work. I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

There’s something about a warm and purring cat pressed against you that sets the world right.

-Tess Gerritsen (The Shape of Night p 18)

A ghost, afterall, is every woman’s perfect lover. I don’t need to charm or amuse him, or worry that I’m too old or toof at or too plain. He won’t crowd my bed at night or leave his shoes and socks strewn around the room. He materlializes when I need to be loved the way I want to be loved, and in the morning he conveniently vanishes into thin air. I never neeed to cool him breakfast.

-Tess Gerristsen (The Shape of Night p 68)

We keep our darkest secrets to ourselves. We keep them, most of all from those we love.

-Tess Gerristsen (The Shape of Night p 196)