Title: A Shimmer in the Night
Series: Dark Is the Night: Book 2.5
Authors: Kelley York and Rowan Altwood
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: Novella
Category: Historical, Paranormal
At a Glance: If there is any one takeaway from my experience with this writing duo, it is to never attempt to predict where they will take me. They have conveyed an emotional and gripping story in A Shimmer in the Night, which I admit was unexpected and is beautifully done.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Benjamin Prichard has spent much of his life feeling like an outsider. Growing up, his odd behaviour and visions of ghosts left him isolated, not to mention being the child of an immigrant mother and an absent father. Benjamin walks the line between not being Chinese enough for one community, and not English enough for the other.
Whisperwood School for Boys changes everything. More specifically, Preston Alexander does. Drawn into a close circle of friends for the first time, Benjamin finally feels as though he’s found somewhere he belongs. But life is never simple; his feelings for Preston are hardly platonic, and Benjamin doesn’t need one more reason to stand out—which means the option of pursuing those feelings is off the table.
But after graduation, when tragedy flips his world upside-down, Benjamin will need to decide which path he wants to chase: the one his mother always wanted for him, or the one that follows the boy he loves.
Review: Benjamin Prichard and Preston Alexander played a significant role at Whisperwood School for Boys, as friends of James Spencer and William Esher and allies in their investigation of the murder of a fellow friend and student, not to mention being integral to their surviving the malevolence that pervaded the hallowed halls of the school—both a human and an incorporeal evil. As the tease at the end of A Hymn in the Silence, book two in the Dark Is the Night series, in which James and William found themselves in a fight for their lives, and for each other, it was revealed there would be a change of scenery for Preston while James and William take some much-needed and well-deserved time off from their nightmare inducing investigative duties. The fact that Preston is sore-hearted as he sits at his Aunt Eleanor’s table is evident to one and all. The reason he is hurting is further explored in this short novel, and it is every bit as touching as I anticipated his and Benjamin’s story would be, based on that single scene alone. But, if there is any one takeaway from my experience with this writing duo, it is to never attempt to predict where they will take me. They have conveyed an emotional and gripping story in A Shimmer in the Night, and it is, not surprisingly, lyrical and altogether beautiful.
A Shimmer in the Night is best read as a transition book. It’s the narrative that threads ever more connective tissue between what had happened during, and at the end of, Year Three at Whisperwood, it discloses how close Benji and Preston have become over the years, and it also gives readers the full scope of the events which led to Preston agreeing to deliver a mysterious—most probably sinister—package to America on behalf of his Aunt Eleanor’s client. Allowing Preston to bait the hook at the end of Hymn and then allowing Benji’s capable voice and gentle hands to reel me into their story was a master stroke of the old bait-and-switch. Preston is everything stalwart and adoring and wonderful, but Benji’s backstory is, inarguably, more interesting by miles, the emotional quotient much higher than for Preston, and I quickly recognized that there is little more poignant than watching two people in love longing for what they believe they can’t have, and denying themselves of each other out of fear and what they each assume is in the other’s best interest.
Benji being bicultural leaves him straddling a no man’s land between two diametrically opposed worlds. He is neither Chinese nor English, he is both and yet is not accepted as either. But perhaps the greater sin, according to his own father, is that Benjamin dares to exist at all. He is little more to Franklin Hale than an unfortunate consequence of a nearly two decades affair with Liu Yang, Benji’s beloved mother, and I am so grateful to York and Altwood for offering this novella as a setup to the next book in the series. Benji is a character who has already lost so much, and could lose again, but he also has so much to gain as he makes what is sure to be his first life-altering decision, and I can say without hesitation that I already love that he and Preston are taking on a more significant role in the series.
Fair warning here, if you tend to be a completionist, prepare to set that aside for now, as A Shimmer in the Night ends at the perfect tease for the beginning of Preston and Benji’s journey. The prevailing paranormal aspects of the series are also more muted in this novella, apart from knowing that Benji can see ghosts, as the story is meant to focus on character revelations and give readers the setup for his and Preston’s future involvement in the series arc. The bittersweetness that pervades their every interaction, and the entirety of their relationship, is the promise that there will be much to love as their story takes center stage in the series.
You can buy A Shimmer in the Night here:
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