Julian's Numbers

A Ghost Story

De: Jeffrey Wilson

Narrado por: James Patrick Cronin

Lost at sea, can he save all he loves from the ghostly stowaways trapped aboard with him?

Julian wants more than anything to be like every other kid—skateboard, hang out with friends, have sleepovers, and tease his little brother and sister. But Julian has a special gift, one which, to him, feels more of a curse.

In his dreams, he is visited by spirits who tell him things—sometimes very important things.

He has called these “tell-you” dreams since he was little, and he knows now to keep them secret, ever since one such dream came true when the little Mendes girl down the street was murdered in her basement.

But now, Julian will need the ghosts from his dreams more than ever. Voices have given him the winning lottery numbers and he and his family are setting out on a family sailing vacation on their new sailboat, Julian’s Numbers.

The dreams are warning him of an evil that will capture his mother and put his entire family—and maybe much more—at risk. He will need to listen to his ghosts if he is to have any chance of stopping the growing evil aboard their yacht and save his family from certain death…

THE SHINING meets DEAD CALM in this supernatural horror ghost thriller from the mind of Jeff Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of the TIER ONE and THE SHEPHERDS Series and now Tom Clancy’s JACK RYAN Series.

©2024 Aethon Books (P)2024 Aethon Audio

a fun adventure

a great adventure where Julian a kid of 10 years old sensitive to the supernatural, as he see vision of the future though telludreams where ignoring these warnings have grave consequences.

Unexpectedly Brilliant and Completely Unsettling

I’m not usually into scary stories or horror at all, but I gave Julian’s Numbers a chance because Jeffrey Wilson is one half of one of my favorite writing duos, and I’m really glad I did. This story was intelligent, eerie, immersive, and genuinely unsettling without relying on cheap scares. The tension slowly builds and pulls you in until you can’t stop listening. Even outside my normal genre, this completely hooked me, which says a lot about the quality of the writing and narration.

Thrilling.......

3.5 Stars ⭐️

This book is from one half of a writing duo that I ABSOLUTELY love. While I am not a huge fan of books in the horror genre, I thought it was kind of funny that I just read 2 books in a row that fall into this category. It is not that I majorly dislike this genre, it is more that I'm a bit of a wimp. Luckily, both books were just the right amount of scariness - not too much, but enough to still cause a little bit of anxiety.

In this story, we meet 10 year old Julian, who has been plagued by what he calls "Tell You" dreams since he was too young to even remember. We also learn that this was not a surprise to his father who unfortunately handled this entire situation unbelievably bad. It seems that his father suffered from the same affliction when he was a boy severly traumatized him. Why? Because his disregard of the dreams ended up in the death of his boyhood best friend (the dreams had warned him to keep his friend away) so he decided that completely ignoring his past was the way to go and he decided to ignore them in his son. His behavior ended up making his son feel like if he mentioned the dreams, his dad was going to stop loving him so, he learned to not tell him anymore.

The tell you dreams were scary, but they actually foretold things that were going to happen. At times, this was extremely frustrating - the lack of communication between the family members is a constant theme throughout the entire story -past the point where you would think that SOMEONE would figure out that they REALLY needed to tell someone what each was experiencing. THAT was extremely frustrating as a reader.

The story itself is intriguing and Mr. Wilson does an amazing job of building the tension and creating that atmosphere where I was virtually holding my breath and trying to figure out how in the world this was going to end well.

My biggest disappointment in this book is the ending. It felt very abrupt. To me, there should have been at least one more chapter to close things off and tie of the loose ends. I can't give specific examples due to spoilers, but I had SO many questions at the end. So many things were just ignored and not explained and then we were given an Epilogue where everything was great, without any type of explanation on HOW we got from that last chapter to the Epilogue. Other than that, I really enjoyed it.

Great story in the vein of the Shining

Solid story told from the POV of a 10 year old kid dealing with his own ghosts and trying to keep his family afloat.

Great narration! I'll be thinking about Julian and his dad for a long time!

This is a hard book for me to review as I'm not fond of the horror genre. Although I like trying new things, and when Aethon offered me a copy I snagged it... plus the narrator is great! I wasn’t expecting it to be a story about a family, and I could only take the story in small chunks, a few hours here, and a couple more there (even reading a couple of cozy's in between) then I girded my loins and now I'm attempting the review. Was the story intense? Yes, yes it was! And yes I'll be thinking about Julian and his father for a long time ⌛ thanks to this book.