Stacy Willingham‘s novel, A Flicker in the Dark, takes us on a journey through the life of Chloe Davis, a psychologist who finds herself facing her past when a series of teenage girls go missing in her town.
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.
A Flicker in the Dark was a fun read even if the drunk, pill-popping narrator is something we have read over and over. The ending was easily guessed from the very beginning, but Willingham was able to weave in plenty of red herrings and unexpected twists. While it started off a bit slow, the pacing picks up to push us to the end. As things are revealed in the last quarter of the book, they are not as much surprising as they are exciting.
Even with a story such as A Flicker in the Dark where the story is guessed within the first few chapters, they can be an exciting and worthwhile read. Willingham kept our attention and we were glad we went for the journey. A Flicker in the Dark is a captivating thriller that never really had us bored and Stacy Willingham’s storytelling kept us going until the end.
A Flicker in the Dark is available at bookstores everywhere. Check out Libro.fm’s audiobook narrated by Karissa Vacker and support local bookstores.
