A Gripping, Page-Turner
Description
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?
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 page.
Details
- Rating: ☆☆☆☆
- Genre: Psychological Thriller
- Length: 368 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
- Release Date: January 11, 2022
What Others Are Saying
“Willingham skillfully intercuts Chloe’s anxious first-person narration in the present with flashbacks to her childhood, ratcheting up the tension. Atmospheric prose and abundant red herrings amplify the tale’s intensity. Willingham is a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly
“A psychological thriller in the truest sense — an engaging, propulsive read, loaded with surprising twists, that genuinely thrills as it gets deep under the skin of its fascinating heroine, Chloe Davis. I tore through this book.” —Alison Gaylin
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
My throat tickles.
It’s subtle, at first. The tip of a feather being trailed along the inside of my esophagus, top to bottom. I push my tongue back into my throat and attempt to scratch.
It doesn’t work.
I hope I’m not getting sick. Have I been around a sick person lately? Someone with a cold? There’s no way to be sure, really. I’m around people all day. None of them looked sick, but the common cold can be contagious before ever showing any symptoms.
I try to scratch again.
Or maybe it’s allergies. Ragweed is higher than normal. Severe, actually. An 8 out of 10 on the allergy tracker. The little pinwheel on my weather app was solid red.
I reach for my glass of water, take a sip. Swish it around a bit before swallowing.
It still doesn’t work. I clear my throat.
“Yeah?”
I look up at the patient before me, stiff as a wooden plank strapped to my oversized leather recliner. Her fingers are clenched in her lap, thin, shiny slits barely visible against the otherwise perfect skin of her hands. I notice a bracelet on her wrist, an attempt to cover the nastiest scar, a deep, jagged purple. Wooden beads with a silver charm in the shape of a cross, dangling like a rosary.
I look back at the girl, taking in her expression, her eyes. No tears, but it’s still early.
“I’m sorry,” I say, glancing down at the notes before me. “Lacey. I just have a little tickle in my throat. Please, continue.”
“Oh,” she says. “Okay. Well, anyway, like I was saying … I just get so mad sometimes, you know? And I don’t really know why? It’s like this anger just builds and builds and then, before I know it, I need to—”
She looks down at her arms, fans her hands. There are tiny cuts everywhere, like hairs of glass, hidden in the webby dips of skin between her fingers.
“It’s a release,” she says. “It helps me calm down.”
I nod, trying to ignore the itch in my throat. It’s getting worse. Maybe it’s dust, I tell myself—it is dusty in here. I glance over to the windowsill, the bookshelf, the diplomas framed on my wall, all of them sporting a fine layer of gray, glinting in the sunlight.
Focus, Chloe.
I turn back toward the girl.
“And why do you think that is, Lacey?”
“I just told you. I don’t know.”
“If you had to speculate.”
She sighs, glances to the side, and stares intently at nothing in particular. She’s avoiding eye contact. The tears are coming shortly.
“I mean, it probably has something to do with my dad,” she says, her lower lip trembling slightly. She pushes her blonde hair back from her forehead. “With him leaving and everything.”
“When did your dad leave?”
“Two years ago,” she says. As if on cue, a single tear erupts from her tear duct and glides down her freckled cheek. She wipes it angrily. “He didn’t even say goodbye. He didn’t even give us a fucking reason why. He just left.”
I nod, scribbling more notes.
“Do you think it’s fair to say that you’re still pretty angry with your dad over him leaving you like that?”
Her lip trembles again.
“And since he didn’t say goodbye, you weren’t able to tell him how his actions made you feel?”
She nods at the bookshelf in the corner, still avoiding me.
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess that’s fair.”
“Are you angry with anyone else?”
“My mom, I guess. I don’t really know why. I always figured that she drove him away.”
“Okay,” I say. “Anybody else?”
She’s quiet, her fingernail picking at a chunk of raised skin.
“Myself,” she whispers, not bothering to wipe the puddle of tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. “For not being good enough to make him want to stay.”
“It’s okay to be angry,” I say. “We’re all angry. And now that you’re comfortable verbalizing why you’re angry, we can work together to help you manage it a little better. To help you manage it in a way that doesn’t hurt you. Does that sound like a plan?”
“It’s so fucking stupid,” she mutters.
“What is?”
“Everything. Him, this. Being here.”
“What about being here is stupid, Lacey?”
“I shouldn’t have to be here.”
She’s shouting now. I lean back, casually, and lace my fingers together. I let her yell.
“Yeah, I’m angry,” she says. “So what? My dad fucking left me. He left me. Do you know what that feels like? Do you know what it feels like being a kid without a dad? Going to school and having everyone look at you? Talk about you behind your back?”
“I actually do,” I say. “I do know what that’s like. It’s not fun.”
She’s quiet now, her hands shaking in her lap, the pads of her thumb and pointer finger rubbing the cross on her bracelet. Up and down, up and down.
“Did your dad leave you, too?”
“Something like that.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve,” I say.
She nods. “I’m fifteen.”
“My brother was fifteen.”
“So you get it, then?”
This time, I nod, smile. Establishing trust—the hardest part.
“I get it,” I say, leaning forward again, closing the distance between us. She turns toward me now, her tear-soaked eyes boring into mine, pleading. “I totally get it.”
Copyright © 2021 by Stacy Willingham
This psychological thriller revolves around Chloe, the daughter of a confessed serial killer. As one might guess, Chloe was completely devastated when she discovered that her father had a dark secret. And as a way of preserving her health, she worked to never be associated with her past.
But now, twenty years later is she being haunted by a copycat killer? Young girls are dying around her. Just like before.
Though this didn’t immediately win me over, the more I read the more I needed to know.
I began to wonder about Chloe. She was continually needing to reach for medication to push the past out of her consciousness. Was she a reliable character? Had someone in her past surfaced? Could it be a copycat killer?
While at one point I was sure I had it all figured out, I still vacillated from here to there in my thinking. The more I thought I knew, the faster the pages flew. I needed to confirm my thoughts, which, by the way, weren’t correct.
My Concerns
As can be expected, there may have been a few places that required suspension of disbelief, but it certainly wasn’t enough to concern me.
Final Thoughts
I would highly recommend this psychological thriller. If you’re like me you’ll be doing lots of guessing, and you might even be correct. But the ride to the end is definitely worth the journey.
Willingham’s debut novel is so good that you can be sure she will be on my radar. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ebook and the ability to post my thoughts in a review.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STACY WILLINGHAM worked as a copywriter and brand strategist for various marketing agencies before deciding to write fiction full time. She earned her BA in Magazine Journalism from the University of Georgia and MFA in Writing from the Savannah College of Art & Design. She currently lives in Charleston, SC with her husband, Britt, and Labradoodle, Mako.
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