Author: Stacy Willingham
Narrator: Karissa Vacker
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: January 2022
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Buy the Book: Amazon | BN | Audible
Description: 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 chapter.
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?
My Thoughts: As a child, Chloe Davis not only learns her father is a serial killer but she was instrumental in his capture by turning him in. An event like this would leave anyone deeply traumatized and carrying massive loads of emotional and mental baggage. I felt an immense amount of empathy for this character and also felt high amounts of anxiety with her wondering who she could trust when similar disappearances and murders begin occurring twenty years after her father is sent to prison. Did Chloe turn in the wrong person? Is it a copy-cat killer? Is Chloe an intended target?
This author is new to me but I am looking forward to reading more of her work. I loved the tightly woven story, heavily laden with tension and twists that heightened my anxiety while ripping the rug out from under me. I also loved that the author leads the reader into a possible outcome, only to jerk the steering wheel in the opposite direction giving me the sense I’m in a runaway vehicle and the brakes have failed. The audiobook narration performed by Karissa Vacker was excellent as well. She deployed the perfect level of apprehension which made the characters believable and relatable.
My Final Verdict: I highly recommend this book to fans of mysteries, thrillers and stories that make you question yourself and suspect everyone around you.
Thank you to the publisher, Macmillan Audio, who provided an advance reader copy of this audiobook via NetGalley.
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