Valley of the Shadow

Tom Pawlik
Tyndale House Publishers (2009)
ISBN 9781414326795
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (4/09) 

Tom Pawlik’s “Valley of the Shadow” is not a cheery book, but that does not mean it is not a deeply satisfying one.  The complex plot, the well-crafted dialogue, the thought-provoking premise of each of us being responsible for helping others achieve salvation, the creepy scenes of sheer, utter terror and chilling desperation definitely draw the reader in quickly.

Conner Hayden should have died that fateful day, but somehow he did not. And every day he is more and more certain that his survival was not a fluke, but something designed for a reason – specifically, he is supposed to save the soul – and the life – of Mitch Kent, a young man whose spirit is trapped in the same eerie Interworld that Conner managed to escape after his narrow brush with death. While Mitch’s body remains on life support, his spirit dwells on a farm with the weird old farmer, Howard Bristol, unaware of who and what Howard really is. When Mitch decides to stretch the boundaries a bit, he encounters Nathan, another spirit who is about to help him return to the world of the living.

In the meanwhile, in that same world of the living, Conner Hayden sets the wheels in motion for an unbelievably spine-chilling series of encounters that will lead to an unforgettable and weirdly disturbing, yet satisfying ending. While definitely not your usual vanilla-type happy ending, everything falls in place and reader is left sitting there wondering exactly what was that hit him or her so hard.

While I usually prefer sunnier books, I’ve enjoyed reading Tom Pawlik’s “Valley of the Shadows.” Everything - from the storyline, the plot, the background and the characters to the moral of the tale - was extremely well crafted, highly suspenseful and anything but expected.

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