Your Shadow Half Remains

October 1, 2023

Riley lives alone on the shores of an isolated lake in the home that belonged to her grandparents--that is, before they murdered each other. She lives in a slowly collapsing world, where for the last two years, looking a human in the eye, be it a real person, an image, or even a reflection, will spur them to violence, causing them to killing everyone near them. Then Riley meets Ellis on the road and dares to connect with another person. Riley is an engaging narrator, recounting the "horrifyingly banal" downfall of society, drawing readers in and gaining their trust even as she slowly becomes less and less reliable. While the setup warrants comparisons to Bird Box by Josh Malerman or The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson, the reading experience of Moraine's latest (after Sword and Star), with its multiple layers of discomfort, is reminiscent of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca. VERDICT Creepy from its first lines, this deceptively quiet roller-coaster of intense unease, palpable emotional trauma, and engrossing menace will appeal to a wide swath of readers.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 18, 2023
Moraine (Casting the Bones) sets this sharp, tension-filled psychological thriller in a world stricken by a strange and violent pandemic that is transmitted through eye contact and triggers the urge to kill both others and, eventually, oneself. Riley has been isolated in a house in the woods by a lake for so long that time has become fluid and her connection to reality is fading. At the start of the book, she encounters the first human she’s seen in who-knows-how-long: Ellis, who seems kind and well-intentioned, but may be hiding something sinister. The rules of the eye-contact-killing disease are at times hard to grasp, with the characters just as unclear on its mechanics as the reader (the failure of technology has caused a near-total disconnection between Riley, Ellis, and whatever’s left of the world, leaving them unaware of any discoveries or mutations that may have occurred). As the bite-size novel progresses, it becomes clear that Riley, too, cannot be trusted: her version of events hides the macabre truth of her past. The result is a freaky and masterfully constructed tale, whose strength most often comes from what Moraine leaves to the imagination. Read this one with the lights on.

Starred review from January 1, 2024
Riley has her life figured out--or as much of a life as she can have in a world where society has been ravaged by a pandemic. The pandemic in question isn't a virus or bacteria; instead, it sends anyone who makes eye contact with another human into a rage that ends in violent death. To survive, Riley has holed herself away in her late grandmother's cabin with enough food and water to last for several months of total isolation. When a mysterious stranger moves in down the road, Riley's conditioned acceptance of the world is shattered. Ellis makes her feel safe, and, despite her best efforts, Riley finds herself making increasingly reckless decisions in her search for human contact. But when she starts to feel eyes constantly tracking her and to experience increasingly frequent losses of time, Riley begins to question just how alone she is. A refreshingly original take on dystopian fiction, Moraine's latest is as haunting as it is thought-provoking. Fans of Blindness (1998), by Jos� Saramago, and Station Eleven (2014), by Emily St. John Mandel, will be gripped by Riley's deeply human struggles amid a global pandemic.

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