Books › A Flicker in the Dark
A Flicker in the Dark
432 pages
A humid, paranoid descent into the mind of a woman who can no longer trust her own memories, her loved ones, or herself.
What it feels like
Reading this thriller feels like breathing in the thick, oppressive humidity of a Louisiana summer, sticky, suffocating, and heavy with impending storms. The narrative traps you inside the fraying mind of a deeply unreliable protagonist, making her paranoia your own as the boundaries between past trauma and present danger blur. It is a propulsive, dread-soaked experience that relies less on action and more on the creeping, psychological terror of not knowing who to trust, least of all yourself. The prose is sensory and atmospheric, dripping with Southern Gothic undertones that amplify the claustrophobia of a small town with long memories. It will utterly consume readers who crave twisty, character-driven suspense where the darkest secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- humid
- unsettling
- Tone
- paranoid
- introspective
- urgent
- suspenseful
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- inherited trauma · unreliability of memory · psychological survival · gaslighting · the shadow of the past
- The writing
- Sensory and atmospheric, leaning heavily into the oppressive heat and shadows of its Southern setting to mirror the protagonist's fraying mind.
- The arc
- Moves from a fragile, medicated numbness into spiraling paranoia, culminating in a shattering but clarifying confrontation with the truth.
- Who it's for
- Fans of twisty, character-driven psychological thrillers who love an unreliable, traumatized narrator unraveling in real-time.
Content notes
- serial murder
- violence against women
- substance abuse
- gaslighting
- childhood trauma
About the book
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?
Description from Open Library.
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