Thank you Minotaur Books, #partner, for the advanced copy of A Flicker in the Dark in exchange for my honest review. I borrowed the audiobook from the library.
Publisher: Minotaur Books / Macmillan Audio
Published: January 11, 2022
Summary:
From debut author Stacy Willingham comes a masterfully done, lyrical thriller, certain to be the launch of an amazing career. A Flicker in the Dark is eerily compelling to the very last word.
When Chloe Davis was 21, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren’t actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?
My thoughts:
Even though I had this one since it came out…life got in the way and I only just got around to reading it. While it was Stacy Willingham’s debut novel, I actually read her sophomore book, All the Dangerous Things, first because that’s just how things are going lately. I loved that one and knew I had to move this one up on my tbr pile. Then I found out Stacy was going to be at the crime festival I’m going to in April and that did it…this book became an immediate must read!
Why did I wait so long to read this one?!? It has all the things I love in my thrillers – the story grabbed me from the beginning, I loved the main character and there was a serial killer storyline. What’s not to love? This one kept me guessing and I’m pretty sure I suspected every single character at one point…never suspecting the ultimate “guilty” one. And I also loved that our narrator is a bit of an unreliable one…that kept me a bit off-kilter as we moved along in the story.
The book moves back and forth between Chloe’s memories of her childhood and the present, twenty years later when someone happens to be following in the same footsteps as the original murderer, who is presently locked up. What is going on, and more importantly, why is this happening all over again?
The twists in this book kept me on edge and really got under my skin. I thought I knew where this one was going, only to be foiled with each new twist. I loved the way the story was paced, keeping me fully invested throughout. There was never a lull and I flew through this one in a matter of hours!
Having now read both of Stacy Willingham’s books, she is most definitely a must-read author! I cannot wait to see what she writes next and am so excited to meet her next month!
Audio thoughts:
When I saw that Karissa Vacker was narrating this one, I had to listen to it. She is one of my favorite narrators and she did a fantastic job bringing this book to life. Her pacing and intonation were spot on and she infused just the right amount of tension into her voice as needed.
