
Author: Stacy Willingham
Published by: Minotaur Books on Jan. 11, 2022
Genres: Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 368
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: Minotaur Books
Book Rating: 8.5/10
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 page.
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren’t really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?
In a debut novel that has already been optioned for a limited series by actress Emma Stone and sold to a dozen countries around the world, Stacy Willingham has created an unforgettable character in a spellbinding thriller that will appeal equally to fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.
Review:
Intricate, gritty, and unsettling!
A Flicker in the Dark transports you into the life of psychologist Chloe Davis, a young woman just reaching a point of contentment in her life she never thought she would achieve, until the past suddenly collides with the present and teen girls start to go missing and are found murdered in an eerily similar way to the six teens her father murdered one summer twenty years ago.
The writing is tight and intense. The characters are complex, tormented, and unreliable. And the plot using flashbacks and a back-and-forth style intertwines and unravels seamlessly into an engrossing whodunit full of twists, turns, lies, deception, suspicious personalities, familial drama, depravity, violence, and murder.
Overall, A Flicker in the Dark is a devious, atmospheric, promising debut by Willingham that kept me guessing from the very first page and left me entertained, satisfied, and without a doubt eager to read whatever her deliciously sinister mind manages to come up with next.
This novel is available now.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press – Minotaur Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.