Flicker In The Dark By Stacy Willingham

This was an excellent psychological suspense book that lived up the genre! A lot of plot twists with excellent writing leading the reader to make incorrect assumptions….

The protagonist Chloe clearly has issues stemming from her PTSD. She uses drugs prescription drugs (prescribed from herself) to self medicate her pain. She rationalizes her use like an addict does (I should know I am in long-term recovery). Early in the book you get the feeling that she had some type of obsession with the first girl that went missing from her childhood; Lena. Since this is a psychological thriller my first though of course is that perhaps Chloe has more to do with it than we are led to believe? Especially since she admits wondering if she always knows the difference between reality and her mind…

Chloe is the daughter of a convicted serial killer. Her father is serving life in prison for the murder of six girls that were never found.

As the book unfolds we learn that Chloe’s fiancé Daniel is has secrets. His whereabouts are not clear or much about his background. When girls start to go missing in the present time he is also awfully familiar with the new case even when he was out of state. Is he involved?

Then there is Lena’s father… He seems like the obvious suspect…

The book is very enjoyable. My only complaint is how the author depicts Chloe’s prescription drug abuse. She (perhaps unknowingly) normalizes the use of benzos‘s. I wouldn’t say she’s glamorizing drug use but she’s falsifying the safety of it. As a person with love experience with drug and alcohol misuse and a substance use disorder professional I can say that people that abuse drug and alcohol (and make no mistake her use is definitely abuse) for the period of time that she has been -since her college days; escalate into full-blown addiction long before now. The author makes it appear that she can just pop a happy pill whenever she needs and she floats away blissfully without addiction.. Again, I know this was written this way to add to the suspense to add confusion, question reality but as a SUD professional I never like people to think this is normal…

Ok enough of my soapbox.. I definitely would recommend this book to anyone look for a good Psychological Suspense read…

Read on for some minor spoilers…

I feel the very first misdirection the author wants us to go on is questioning Daniel. Chloe‘s brother Cooper has always had her back really doesn’t like him and we keep getting replays of the conversation see it had about Daniel‘s character.

After girls start to go missing Chloe receives a call from a reporter from the New York Times wanting to meet and discuss her father and the correlation to the new cases. He believes there is a copycat killer which starts Chloe‘s investigative mind.

Then and at the same time the author clearly wants us to think Lena’s dad is the killer Because of his past, his involvement with the family that came out after Chloe’s father was arrested. And later after she confronts him in the present time comments you makes makes him sound like a cold blooded murder. Too me it seems TO OBVIOUS…

Read on for more spoilers

After Chloe‘s altercation with Lena‘s father she’s sure he is the copycat killer and goes to the police. They seem agitated that she didn’t come forward sooner but say they will follow up. As time goes by they do come back to her and explain that the father turned it around and made her sound crazy. They also bring up her past in college that had a similar situation that actually does make Chloe look like the crazy one. The police basically tell her to mind her own business and stay out of the keys.

Then in a sudden jerk you are routed in a different direction… Chloe finds one of the missing girls pieces of jewelry in Daniel’s box in their closet just like she did when she was a child of her own father. Now, she’s certain her fiancé Daniel is the killer.

She goes to her journalist friend and shares this revelation and they began to investigate this by visiting Daniels hometown and his mother. This leads to evidence to bolster her believe that Daniel is the killer.

However, in a good psychological suspense novel things are never what they seem even when the book is near the end.. the last 20% of the book is explosive with so many revelations that ties everything together…

It definitely had a twist I wasn’t expecting.

I was surprised by how much I liked this book! It’s a captivating page turner with a lot of twists. My only complaint, which is really just my preference rather than an actual complaint, is that I wish the author had given more information at the end about the characters and how they fared going forward.

I definitely recommend it—I read it at the beach, and it was perfect!

The audiobook narrator was great, although she had her work cut out having to voice multiple male characters and ended up sounding the same. No harm done; very nice job regardless of the lack of variation.

The book itself was decent, but nothing to write home about. It was recommended to me right on the heels of Alice Feeney’s “Rock Paper Scissors”, so I had high expectations going in. Instead, I deduce that the recommendation system isn’t that great.

Writing style = good, pacing = great, although there were a few changes in perspective that killed the tension that had been masterfully built up. The book starts a little weak but grows into the story fairly quickly and the writing definitely improves as we get deeper into it. So while a congratulations is due to Stacy W. for a decent first novel, the plot works not because the narrator is Xanax-ed up and unreliable, no no – but because she is plainly and utterly stupid.

The plot is extremely obvious and while I don’t want to get into it too much here due to spoilers, anyone with half a logical brain will immediately understand who the serial killer is, why some main characters behave as they do (some red herrings are extremely forced and really just serve to make Chloe look extremely paranoid, which – let’s face it – she should know how to deal with if she is a practicing psychotherapist). If Chloe was painted out at the start to be a moron, I would have totally bought the story; fine, she doesn’t understand what happened and is happening because she doesn’t know how to think… but she has a high IQ job? No way. **Spoilers** For instance, D-A- = Daniel and not Dad, really? When her mother has never met Daniel? Why would anyone in any circumstances with a functioning brain think that? The journalist storyline didn’t really “fit” well either, very forced; twist for twist’s sake. **End Spoilers**

So while I would suggest you pick it up if you’re getting on a long flight and there’s nothing else in the bookstore or you’ve read everything else, I can’t really suggest investing a lot of time in this book and I certainly can’t believe why this has 20K 4.5+ star reviews. I’m being harsh and giving 3 stars to pull that average down: 3.7-3.9 stars is where I would place this.