Shutter by Courtney Alameda: A Book Review ~ Jump Into Books

Title: Shutter (Shutter #1)
Author: Courtney Alameda
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publish Date: February 3, 2015
Pages: 384
Buy It: Amazon | Book Depository

Horror has a new name: introducing Courtney Alameda.

Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.

When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying.

Lock, stock, and lens, she’s in for one hell of a week.

I loved this book from start to finish. It had everything I could hope for in a ghost hunting book. A kickass heroin, a hot brooding Aussie, best friends and action. At moments I wanted to scream at the book and others I wanted to reach through and bitch slap her dad. I got pretty early on who we were hunting as in the entity, which wasn't a big deal. I'm glad the book played out the way it did. There was plenty of the edge of your seat nail biting moments to make up for it. I'm also really glad the ending played out like it did and it left it open in case the author decides to revisit the Helsings in the future.

A veteran bookseller and librarian, Courtney Alameda now spends her days writing thriller and horror novels for young people. Her debut novel, SHUTTER, was nominated for a Bram Stoker award and hailed as a "standout in the genre" by School Library Journal. Her forthcoming novel, PITCH DARK (Spring 2017), is a genre-blending science fiction/horror novel in the vein of Ridley Scott's 1979 film ALIEN.

Courtney holds a B.A. in English literature with an emphasis in creative writing. She is represented by the talented John M. Cusick of Folio Literary. A Northern California native, she now resides in Utah with her husband, a legion of books, and a tiny five pound cat with a giant personality.