My Five Word TL:DR Review: Loved it.  Creepy and Macabre

This is an author that I already really enjoy reading, her fantasy books are so, so good and I highly recommend them.  She’s recently dipped her toes into thriller/chillers and I’ve been enjoying these as well but The Hungry Dark is my absolute favourite so far.  It kept me totally gripped.  This is a creepy murder mystery, with a great setting that takes a little hike into the land of the supernatural (but in a very low key fashion).

This story revolves around Ashley Whitelam.  A psychic who is something of a conundrum.  Ashley has always been able to see shadowy figures that she calls The Heedful Ones.  They don’t cause her any distress and in fact you’d think that this ability would play into her psychic abilities – but it doesn’t help her in that respect at all and in fact Ashley’s career is a farce, she’s a con artist.  She performs psychic readings to audiences but in fact she wears an earpiece and her brother feeds her with the information she delivers after checking out the Facebook pages of the audience members who are grieving a lost one.  This isn’t someting that Ashley is proud of but following a traumatic childhood event that she miraculously survived (having had a vision of the disaster) she rose to fame and unfortunately became the family bread winner in the process.  She now finds herself in the unenviable position of being trapped and with very little life or control of her own even at the age of 32(ish).  If this wasn’t enough of a problem in itself her brother volunteers Ashley to help the police to try and locate the body of a young boy who is missing and believed to be the latest victim of the ‘Gingerbread House murderer – eight children have already fallen victim and the police seem to have no leads. When Ashley actually succeeds in finding the body things spiral out of control in many ways bringing her some unwanted attention.  But I wont delve further into the plot.

So, instead I’ll write about what worked so well for me.

I liked Ashley.  I felt really frustrated on her behalf as she struggled to balance the career that she never wanted with the responsibility of providing for her family, her father would even go to the lengths of taking her car keys and moving her car – for goodness sake, she’s a thirty year old worman.  The word trapped doesn’t even cover it.  Surprisingly, having told her parents that she could see shadowy figures as a child she was told never to speak of this again.  Ironic that the actual ability that she does have has been smothered by an overprotective father who thinks she is lying but then demands she lie every day for a living.  Also, ironically, in spite of being a con artist Ashley is really quite gullible, easy to give her trust and not always able to see the bigger picture.

Ashley teams up with an American podcaster and the two do a little bit of digging into the Gingerbread murders, uncovering information not released to the general public.  I liked this aspect to the story.  We don’t follow the police investigation so the insertion of this amateur sleuthing element was very intriguing.

The family dynamics were really interesting and play into the story well.  Ashley’s father has taken on the role of manager/protector and pushes Ashley into interviews and situations that she is rarely happy with.  Her mother was traumatised by the experience Ashled endured as a child and in actual fact Ashley now feels the need to protect her.  She gets on well with her brother but even that relationship has issues.

Set in the Lake DIstrict and in particular a small village known as Green Beck the folklore elements feed the creepy element, particularly the notion of the fells being cursed.  Green Beck has a long history, not always palatable and on top of this much of the story takes place at Red Rigg House, a spooky and rambling gothic estate overshadowed by an ominous mountain that looms menacingly.

The writing is great.  The dialogue just flows really well, the pacing is fast and there’s plenty of atmosphere and tension.  On top of this we have a dual timeline where we flit back and forth between Ashley now and as a child, the trauma that she experienced gradually unfolding.

Put simply, in a nutshell, this worked for me in so many ways.  Gripping, grisly murders, spooky mansion, cursed village, creepy shadow figures.  A family with fraught emotions balanced on a knife edge and an MC being pursued by the police, journalists and a host of people from hangers on, bereaved in search of comfort and those determined to uncover Ashley for the sham artist she is.  It all builds into the most delicious and stormy finale.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 4.5 of 5 stars