I was three hours into my drive home - took the long way through the desert because I wasn't ready to stop listening - when I realized I'd missed my exit twice. That's either a sign of sleep deprivation (possible, always possible) or a book that's got its hooks in you. With Rewind, it was genuinely both.
Catherine Ryan Howard does something structurally gutsy here. She gives you the murder in the first act - a woman killed in a holiday cottage, caught on a hidden camera by the creepy manager watching from another room - and then she says, okay, now let's rewind. The book literally moves backward and forward through time, with chapters labeled like VCR controls: Play, Pause, Rewind. And I'll be honest, for the first couple of hours, I wasn't sure if it was clever or just disorienting. My sleep-deprived brain was doing overtime trying to track which timeline I was in.
The VCR Gimmick That Almost Loses You (But Doesn't)
Here's where I think the negative reviews have a point. Some people found the non-linear timeline disjointed, the pacing slow, the characters forgettable. And I get it. If you're half-listening while doing dishes, this book will punish you. The shifting timelines require you to actually pay attention - who knew what and when, how Andrew the voyeur manager connects to Natalie the guest who's clearly searching for something she won't name, and the slow reveal of what brought everyone to this tiny, rain-soaked Irish town.
But here's where I disagree with the critics: the characters aren't forgettable. They're uncomfortable. Andrew is deeply unsettling precisely because Howard doesn't make him a cartoon villain. He's pathetic and sad and morally bankrupt, and you understand exactly how he justifies watching a woman through a hidden camera. That's harder to sit with than a flat character. Give me a mustache-twirling psychopath any day - it's the ordinary-looking guy with rationalizations that keeps me checking my hotel rooms. State of Terror does something similar with its villains - the scariest threats are the ones who've convinced themselves they're reasonable.
Natalie, on the other hand, carries this desperate energy that builds as you learn more about why she came to Shanamore. She's not a passive victim waiting to happen. She's there with purpose, and the tension between what she's looking for and what's actually waiting for her is where the real suspense lives.
Alana Kerr Collins and That Irish Small-Town Dread
Alana Kerr Collins. Audie Award winner. And yeah, you can hear why. Her Irish lilt does something specific here - it wraps the whole story in this wet, gray, claustrophobic atmosphere that makes Shanamore feel like a place you'd never want to visit but can't stop picturing. She differentiates the characters clearly, which matters enormously when the timeline is jumping around. I always knew whose head I was in, even when the structure was trying to disorient me.
Her emotional delivery during the suspenseful sequences is strong. There's a particular quality to how she voices Andrew's internal narration - this flatness, this matter-of-fact tone when he's describing something deeply wrong - that made my skin crawl in the best way. She doesn't overplay it. She lets the horror of his normalcy do the work.
That said, I can see how her measured pacing might feel slow to some listeners. She's not rushing. The book isn't rushing. If you want a thriller that sprints, this isn't it. This is a thriller that walks you backward through a crime scene and makes you look at every detail.
The Medical Stuff (Or Lack Thereof) - And Why That's Fine
Look, not every thriller needs to get a central line placement wrong for me to have an opinion. This one's about surveillance, voyeurism, and the slow unraveling of what people do when they think no one's watching. No hospital scenes for me to yell at my dashboard about. (My dashboard got a break. Carlos says the dashboard deserves hazard pay.)
What Howard does get right is the psychology of escalation. How a person crosses one line, then another, then another, each time telling themselves it's not that bad. As someone who's watched families make impossible decisions at 3 AM, I can tell you - the way people justify things to themselves is exactly this mundane. Howard understands that.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Keep Driving)
If you need action every chapter, skip it. If you want a psychological thriller that trusts you to be smart enough to piece a fractured timeline together - and rewards you for paying attention - this is worth your time. It's not Howard's strongest work (I've heard The Liar's Girl hits harder), but it's a solid, unsettling listen that does something genuinely different with structure. If you want that same small-town dread with a bit more momentum, Outsider scratched a similar itch for me.
Perfect for that post-shift decompression when your brain is wired but your body's done. Just don't try it as background listening. This book requires focus, and it will leave you sitting in your driveway with the engine running, needing to hear one more chapter before you go inside and pretend you're fine.
Night Shift Prescription
Three and a half stars. Night shift approved - with the caveat that you need to be awake enough to track the timeline. Alana Kerr Collins carries the structural complexity with confidence. The story rewards patience over adrenaline. Carlos asked why I missed my exit. I blamed the construction on the I-10. He didn't believe me.
