The Shadows is best described as a Stephen King novel that gets so close to being at that level, but in my opinion falls a little short. But not by much. Yes, I may be biased to Stephen King being the best of the best when it comes to thrillers, horror or just plain creepy literature but I really did enjoy this book. It is a fast read and I finished in about two days which is usually a good barometer for how engaging a book is. The Shadows does a lot of things right when it comes to setting up the creepy stage of Charlie’s wicked experiments with lucid dreaming. The entire book you are fully taken over by this idea that you may actually be able to manipulate real life from your dreams. This whole premise is so believable that I was really hoping it led into a crazy semi-supernatural ending that reached King status. However, I will say that while the ending was the biggest let down about the whole book, it did have some awesome twists and turns right before closing that I didn’t see coming. Until the last 25 or so pages I was still really curious about the end. Unfortunately, the end makes sense. And because of the set up throughout the entire book it almost feels anticlimactic. Every loose end was tied up with a pretty little (and realistic) bow. If I had a say I would have over-indexed on the supernatural and doubled down on the mystery. Sure some things would have ended with question marks, but I think that would have fit more than trying to rationalize it all. All around solid thriller that could have been great.