This review does not contain spoilers for A Flicker in the Dark. Trigger warnings include self-harm, suicide, sexual assault, drug use, and murder.
I personally was not a fan of the author's style of writing -- I found that it read a little choppy in the beginning and felt as though the main character was throwing facts and information at you that were not relevant to the story that they were trying to tell. Rather than reading with a flow, it read more like you were in someone's head trying to follow a thought process about something that even they did not understand what was going on or what was necessary to the plot. The story did not pick up for me until about two thirds of the way through when the story really started to evolve.
However, it is definitely a quick read -- you are easily drawn into the world of our main character, Chloe, a medical psychologist with a serial killer as a father. She quickly becomes involved in the search for girls who are going missing twenty years after her father was arrested for the very same thing. Told through both twenty-year-old memories and present time, we see Chloe's development from discovering her father was doing wicked things to her life decades later being thrown right back into the ring.
We get an inside look from Chloe on what these girls were like before her father murdered them as the book progresses -- each of the girls with their own stories, personalities, and stand-out traits that have stayed with Chloe over the years.
Willingham gives us an inside look at Chloe's relationship with these girls -- how well she knew them, if they were friends, if they only talked to her because they liked her brother -- the more we read on, the more we see how they influenced her as well. Additionally, we are able to see the events that took place leading up to Chloe's father's arrest and how he came to be identified as the one who murdered these girls.
The journalist looking into these new copycat killings definitely causes an internal battle for Chloe as she is basically forced to relive her father's killings all over again, but as if she is aware of what is happening the entire time. He comes into her life the month before the twenty year anniversary of the first girls' disappearance, and is there to stay until these killings are solved -- and he makes it very clear to Chloe that even if she does not speak to him, he will continue to look into the new murders.
Chloe's relationship with her brother, Cooper, and with her fiancé, Daniel, are complicated to put it simply. It feels as though she never shows her true self to anyone, not even herself. We learn more about Chloe and her complicated past as the story progresses, and with it I found myself viewing her as an unreliable narrator. She puts herself in unnecessary circumstances and continues to make every possible wrong move, convincing herself that she is doing the right thing.
I personally found this book a little predictable, but I have always been good with guessing the ending to things, especially horror and thriller movies. The author was able to tie up all loose ends, and in my opinion, I think the main character had the ending she deserved for herself. I would recommend this book to fans of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Bleeding Hearts by Dana Louise Provo -- read my review, here.
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