Review – Ghostwriter

Dennis Shore, best selling novelist is unable to write. Mourning the loss of his beloved wife, it seems as if he’ll never recover, but he has a book deadline and needs the money to support his college age daughter. When he receives a manuscript for critique from Cillian Reed, Shore claims the novel as his own and publishes it under his name.

Feeling guilty over what he did, yet thinking he got away with it, Shore awaits the release of the book. And so does Reed. When Reed learns of Shore’s duplicity, he vows to make Shore pay by forcing him to live out the scenes from his previous horror novels and ultimately fight for his very life. This takes Shore on a terrifying journey and pulls the reader along for a fast paced, scary ride.

Ghostwriter continues in the growing list of Travis Thrasher’s captivating stories that grab you on page one, keep you turning the pages, and that you will remember long after finishing the book. I am not a horror fan, avoid it if I can, but for Thrasher and a few other Christian writers I will make exceptions, as their writing is so good I am willing to be scared and venture into an area I’d rather leave alone. I just make sure I read in the daylight hours. And that is what I had to do with Ghostwriter.

Thrasher’s writing is vivid, fresh and original in Ghostwriter yet it is often what he doesn’t say in some of the gory scenes that makes your imagination run wild and conjure up graphic pictures of the action. He excels at getting into the heads of the villains and bringing their bizarre thoughts to life, painting frightening pictures for the reader.

In Ghostwriter, as in all of Thrasher’s works, his characters are authentic, flawed, and filled with deep angst that resonates soundly with the reader. As Shore longs for his wife, you’re gripped by his searing pain and loss and actively root for him to come out of his grief. Couple this with the ghostly plot Thrasher has conjured up for Shore to struggle through and Ghostwriter becomes a book that you cannot put down.