Genre: Mystery / Psychological Thriller / Suspense
Book Type: Physical
Author: Stacy Willingham
Narrator: Karissa Vacker
Pages / Length: 368 pages / 11 hours and 6 minutes
Publisher: Minotaur Books (January 11, 2022) / Macmillan Audio
Book Description:
When Chloe Davis was twelve, 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 twenty 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?
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.
Thoughts: I loved this book and found it full of suspense. This book will keep you guessing and second guessing yourself. I loved the surprises, and while I had predicted a lot of the book, watching it all happen as it plays out was wonderful. It was full of family drama, heart-racing mystery, love, betrayal, heartbreak, and love. It will have you looking over your shoulder and questioning how well you really know those around you. It was a great mystery and I look forward to reading more by this author.
Favorite Quotes:
🔦 Home.
That, too, is a loaded phrase. A home isn't just a house, a collection of bricks and boards held together by concrete and nails. It's more emotional than that. A home is safety, security. The place you go back to when the curfew clock strikes nine.
But what if your home isn't safe? Isn't secure?
What if the outstretched arms you collapse into on your porch steps are the same arms you should be running from? The same arms that grabbed those girls, squeezed their necks, and buried their bodies before washing their own hands clean?
What if your home is where it all started: the epicenter of the earthquake that shook your town to the core? The eye of the hurricane that ripped apart families, lives, you? Everything you had ever known?
What then?
🔦 ... And in that moment, the moment of the crash, it made me realize that monsters don't hide in the woods; they aren't shadows in the trees or invisible things lurking in darkened corners.
No, the real monsters move in plain sight.
🔦 The mother always takes control, The mother always keeps her emotions in check. The mother always speaks evenly, steadily, while the father grovels in the background, unable to lift his head long enough for the man who took his daughter to look him in the eyes. Society would have us think it's the other way around - that the man in the family takes control, the woman cries silently - but it's not. And I know why.
It's because the fathers think in the past [...] The fathers of the six missing girls taught me that. They're ashamed of themselves; they think what if. They were supposed to be the protectors, the men. They were supposed to keep their daughters safe, and they failed. But the mothers think in the present; they formulate a plan. They can't afford to think in the past because the past doesn't matter anymore - it's a distraction. A waste of time. They can't afford to think in the future because the future is too terrifying, too painful - if they let their minds wander there, they may never return. They may break.
So instead, they think only of today. And what they can do today to bring their babies back tomorrow.
🔦 When people get hurt physically, you can see it in the bruises and the scars, but when they're hurt emotionally, mentally, it runs deeper than that. You can see every sleepless night in the reflection of their eyes; you can see every tear stained into their cheeks, every bout of anger etched into the creases in their foreheads.
🔦 She was forced to acknowledge the fact that she was in love with a monster. And if she was in love with a monster... what did that make her?
🔦 [...] the evidence I had seen stacking up, but still, didn't want to believe. Thinking, hoping: There must be good in there somewhere.
🔦 [...] she knew, more than anyone, that the past never stays where we try to keep it, stuffing it deep into the back of a closet and hoping to forget.
🔦 Because that's that parents do: They protect their children, no matter the cost. I think of all those mothers staring into the camera, the fathers melting into puddles by their sides. They had a child who was taken by the darkness - but what if your child was the darkness? Wouldn't you want to protect them, too? It's all about control, after all. The illusion that death is something we can contain, cupping it into our palms and holding it tight, never letting it escape.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
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