SHADOW FOX by Ashley J. Barnard

Publisher: Champagne Books
Date published: October 2010
ISBN: 978-1-926681-68-9
Contemporary Paranormal
E-book
Reviewed by Dawn
Obtained by Author


CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE! Poor Jared Bruin, he has no past before age of seven, a life that felt incomplete somehow. He is obsessed with swordplay and is one of the best masters in the United Kingdom. All he knows that at age twenty-seven something is to happen but for the life of him, he has no idea what. Finding himself without a job or a life in Oxford, he gets a chance to teach swordsmanship to a woman who awakens something inside him even as she scares the dickens out of him. Tarika has clues to Jared’s past and the question is: Will Jared be able to figure his past out in order to have a future?

SHADOW FOX got me hooked half way through the story. Jared took a little to warm up to me though. He was quite a tortured hero here in the beginning and as the author brought out all this man’s demons, we begin to see the person behind it all-the vulnerability, the pain of not knowing his past and who he was. This is a ‘new to me’ author who wrote an engrossing tale that had me flipping the pages, eager to see what would come out of Jared’s mouth. Once the reader got past the set up of the story in the first half of the book, the action peaks and we got to see who Jared is meant to be in the end. The writing is tight; the relationship between Jared and Tarika starts slow, almost at a turtle’s pace but soon speeds up after a significant event that changes their dynamics.

SHADOW FOX introduces the reader to a messed up man named Jared Bruin. He is a man who is obsessed with swordsmanship, has no idea why he gets vicious headaches that he battles with an addiction to heroin and is trying to figure out his past. Finding himself out of a job, his career in tatters, Jared takes a job over in America teaching an eccentric woman the finer art of swordplay. Finding out she has clues to his past leaves Jared reeling as well as curious about Tarika. Is she who she says she is or something else? Jared takes awhile to warm up to. The whole addiction to heroin didn’t sit well with me though that may be my hang up not because of the story itself. The characters are very well written and multi-dimensional. There were a few secondary characters that left me cold, just because I didn’t like them but they helped move the story along nicely. The author does a nice job in creating intriguing characters in a storyline that gently pulls you in and then doesn’t let you go until the last page is read.

I highly enjoyed SHADOW FOX and have added this author to my permanent reading list. If you are looking for a story that has a messed up hero, a mystery to figure out and more, then this is defiantly the book for you. I look forward to reading more of this author’s work in the future.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.