LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA JOHN CREASY DAGGER AWARDHow well do you know your girlfriend?How well do you know your lover? How well do you know yourself?Daniel and Victoria are together. They’re trying for a baby. Ruby is in prison, convicted of assault on an abusive partner.But when Daniel joins a pen pal program for prisoners, he and Ruby make contact. At first the messages are polite, neutral – but … but soon they find themselves revealing more and more about themselves. Their deepest fears, their darkest desires. And then, one day, Ruby comes to find Daniel. And now he must decide who to choose – and who to trust.
more
In the wake of the death of his mother, while his long-term relationship seems to be going nowhere good, Daniel writes a short, drunken letter to an unknown convict through a prison pen-pal organization. This is the beginning of his deep connection with Ruby, the inmate who he’s paired with. But when Ruby comes to find Daniel, things become too real…or maybe unreal.
If you’re looking for a dark, psychological read that will leave you feeling a little unsettled, this is it. If you’re looking for a thriller with twisty goodness…maybe not so much.
The book is fully in epistolary format, with the main character Daniel writing letters to someone named Lucy. From early in the book, I had some theories about how the story might unfold. Though things happened along the way that led me to other theories and the anticipation of one or more surprise twists near the end, it turned out that only my first ideas were correct. And there were no real twists. As I read the final pages, I felt let down.
The writing style is easy to follow, and I did at times feel invested in the story. Overall, though, there is no happiness in this book. Nothing uplifting whatsoever, not that I necessarily expect that from a psychological thriller. But it just all felt so hollow and empty. I was depressed for everyone in the book. And Daniel made such stupid decisions all throughout the book, it made it hard for me to care what happened to him in the end.
What this book really made me feel is happy to be a Christian. Grateful to have the hope that comes from knowing that God is real and that He loves me. That He is in control. It’s not that Christians are all perfect, always-happy people–far from it. But there is something nice in knowing that tragedy doesn’t have to destroy me and that I don’t have to try to fill the void in my life by myself.
A note about the story format–it’s broken into 3 long chapters, which did not bother me as it did others. There are scene breaks if you need a more definite spot to step away for a while. And at times, Daniel’s re-telling of events from years past are broken up by observations of what’s going on around him as he’s writing. This also bothered other readers, due to not being formatted well enough to be able to follow the jumping back and forth. I fear this was an issue with the ARC digital copy, which is a shame, because that shouldn’t come into play in a review. But it can, if it makes the book hard to read (I’ve been there). I read a physical release copy, and I had no issues with scene breaks or the jumping around.
Thank you to Netgalley and Serpent’s Tail for providing me a copy of this book to review.
Told in the form of letters to a woman the reader knows only as Lucy, This Little Dark Place is, at its core, the story of how seemingly small, everyday things can build and build into an actual psychotic break. How that break plays out and who is affected is really little more than the luck of the draw.
At the beginning of the book, Daniel is living a very ordinary sort of life. Living with his girlfriend Victoria, they are trying for a baby in hopes this will fix the ‘something missing’ in their relationship. This part may be painful to read for anyone with triggers relating to conception issues and miscarriage, it should be noted. Struggling with a difficult reality, Daniel joins a pen pal program for prisoners and starts communicating with Ruby, who he begins to feel is the only person who really understands him. Unsure if her version of the events which led to her being incarcerated is the absolute truth, though, he never really trusts her, which leads to his eventual downfall.
I did figure out fairly early on where Daniel ended up; considering the time frames involved, it was fairly obvious, but there were a lot of twists and turns to the story and Lucy’s identity did remain a mystery to me until the big reveal. This is a classic ‘unreliable narrator’ novel, but Daniel does come clean in his letters with the entire truth eventually being revealed. The action is pretty slow to build and to be honest, the prose often felt pretty overblown for, supposedly, what someone would write in letters, but I did enjoy the read. Four stars.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.