The Shock of Night by Patrick W. Carr

★★★★★

When one man is brutally murdered and the priest he works for mortally wounded on the streets of Bunard, Willet Dunham is called to investigate. Yet the clues to the crime lead to contradictions and questions without answers. As Willet begins to question the dying priest, the man pulls Willet close and screams in a foreign tongue. Then he dies without another word.

Willet returns to the city, no closer to answers than before, but his senses are skewed. People he touches appear to have a subtle shift, a twist seen at the edge of his vision, and it's as though he can see their deepest thoughts. In a world divided between haves and have-nots, gifted and common, Willet soon learns he's been passed the rarest gift of all: a gift that's not supposed to exist.

Now Willet must pursue the murderer still on the loose in Bunard even as he's pulled into a much more dangerous and epic conflict that threatens not only his city, but his entire world – a conflict that will force him to come to terms with his own tortured past if he wants to survive.

Patrick W. Carr’s newest series, the Darkwater Saga, takes readers into a creatively unique and intriguing world with this first novel, The Shock of Night, and follows Willet Dura through circumstances involving crime, danger, and all-around evil. With plenty of thrilling mystery and suspense set within the novel’s fantasy, it promises interested readers an immersing read, one very hard to put down. I absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it - but definitely read the novella prequel, By Divine Right, first, as it introduces both Willet and his world. Both installments of the Darkwater Saga so far are great, worthwhile reads, and now, I certainly can’t wait to read the next one, The Shattered Vigil.

Thanks to Bethany House, I received a copy of The Shock of Night and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own.