Out of the Darkness starts off with a truly horrifying experience. Sarah and her friends are visiting haunted houses on Halloween-such a typical teenage event. But what happens at the haunted house changes all their lives. As teenagers, they did not know how to handle the trauma. They pulled away from each other, became closed off, made poor life choices, etc. This leads to Tyler and Sarah breaking up and going in different directions. 10 years later they are reunited by another tragedy. Both are still upset that the other never reached out to them. They feel like the feelings must be gone because neither ever called. I understood their reactions as teenagers, but after 10 years they should have been more mature.
The murder mystery was interesting (even though its pretty obvious who the killer is) and overall, its a well woven plot line. I found the dialogue to be really cheesy though and it was distracting from the story. Honestly, the dialogue made me not really care about any of the characters. If the killer had managed to kill them all, I would have been like "Meh. Whatever" and that is NOT how you want to feel about the main characters in a story!
If you like mysteries, suspense stories, and Law and Order type reads, I think you would find Out of the Darkness a fine read. It was a good story, but I didn't care for the character development (or lack there of).
- POV: 3rd
- Tears: no
- Trope: serial killer, second chance romance
- Triggers: none
- Series/Standalone: stand alone
- Cliffhanger: no
- HEA: yes
books by Christina Dodd, Nora Roberts, Janie Crouch...then you will probably like Out of the Darkness!
See full review on The Book Disciple