The Man With No Shadow by Bonnie Quinn – Review

Published: August 5, 2025

Publisher: Saga Press

Series: How to Survive Camping #1

Genre: Horror

Pages: 320 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

Synopsis:
Welcome to Night Vale meets The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook in a campy, cozy horror novel that will appeal to creepy folklore afficionados and spooky story lovers alike.

I am a campground manager. I don’t have a list of rules because I’m trying to ruin your fun…I’m trying to keep you from doing small, simple things that could result in your horrific and most agonizing demise.

Goat Valley Campground has killed generations of Kate’s family. The land is old, passed down through generations, but the campground’s reputation doesn’t just draw campers year after year. Creatures from folklore and horror have made Goat Valley not just their home, but their hunting ground.

As campground manager, Kate has rules to protect her campers—if the man with the skull cup offers you a drink, accept it or you will die a gruesome death; don’t buy ice from the children with no wagon; and of course, never ever follow the lights. Still, not every camper follows the rules…which means not every camper survives their stay.

Soon decapitated and exsanguinated campers are the least of Kate’s worries; one of the most dangerous inhabitants of the campground is determined to claim the land for himself. Meanwhile, something in the land is shifting, the tides are turning, and the curse that hunts members of her bloodline begins to close in…

I picked this up largely because I saw it was based on a series of stories on r/nosleep, which has some famously creepy content. This is (to me at least) a very original story that reads as somewhat episodic though with an overarching plot that I can see working well in a short form installments. This was a good pick going into the Halloween season and it was a fun, creepy read.

The Man With No Shadow follows Kate, manager of the Goat Valley campground which is inexplicably popular with both human guests and supernatural creatures. The land has been in her family for generations, therefore making it ‘old land’ and this is what draws all manner of terrifying creatures – a man with a skull cup, fae, creepy children, and the like. The book follows Kate as she goes through a camping season, dealing with the stupidity of people not following the rules, which she thinks should be fairly simple. I mean, she has a guidebook and everything. Unfortunately people don’t take it seriously and end up getting picked off in all sorts of horrible ways.

The overarching plot is in the title – Kate must find a way to deal with a particularly nasty supernatural bad guy called the Man With No Shadow. He speaks with people and they fall under his control and he uses them for his own malicious purposes. He also feeds on the shadows of others and likes to bite chunks out of the shadows in order to damage the people they belong to. He’s been trying to wrest control of Goat Valley Campground from Kate in all sorts of underhanded ways and she has to find a way to stop him.

Kate herself is a somewhat sympathetic character at times, but she’s hardened herself to the deadly and terrifying place she’s grown up to the point that she comes across as very unlikable. She’s callous and unsympathetic of idiots who can’t follow simple instructions, but she’s also just a scared woman whose family is slowly being driven off or killed in sometimes comically awful ways. The side characters are… well, present. There’s one who never even gets a name even though he’s kind of important – the Old Sherriff, who helps Kate deal with all the missing and maimed campers and even the townsfolk she’s had to kill over the years.

Overall, this was an entertaining read that wasn’t overly scary and really leaned into multiple folkloric backgrounds. It was interesting to dig further into the origins of some of the beasties that appear, like the Yule Cat. I listened to the audiobook, which I thought was a good production and added to the suspense and atmosphere though toward the end of the book I found myself just wanting to get to the resolution already.