A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

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?

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For a debut novel and a thriller at that, I was so impressed with this book. I haven’t read a thriller in a long time so maybe I’m a bit rusty but the twists in this book were so. good. Yeah, there were a lot of predictable tropes in this book but even when I felt I’d had it all figured out, some new clue would come to light that I was completely blind to. I found the Louisiana setting to be such a great touch. There are so many places in swamps and marshes that can hide the unspeakable so it gave this whole novel a very chilling feel when you realized all the endless possibilities that could have happened to missing girls and how impossible solving these cases would be. My one holdback was the main character. She was the most predictable part of the story and I feel like the author could have moved her OUT of the typical thriller MC trope but instead had this character encapsulate every single thriller female MC stereotype. Other than that, it was an enjoyable read and I look forward to seeing what else this author can come up with in the future.

Let’s start with the plot. It’s already chilling knowing you’re reading about the life of a serial killers daughter. It gets worse with the creepy back country setting. And then it gets introspective as you think about how hard it must be on the families of all these famous criminals in real life to be associated with that type of evil. No wonder Ted Bundy’s daughter changed her name. Who would want that association? Because of this, our main character is already the centre of much unwanted attention even before disappearances start happening around her once again. It was a pretty fast moving plot due to both past and present being centred around crime. Even in flashbacks we got some thrills and answers to questions we had in the present so it felt very well paced and was a fast easy read. I loved the small connections between past and present because it made it hard to tell what was just a coincidence/red herring, and what was maybe related to Chloe’s past. The relationships in this book also added such a good “what if” component to it all. The dynamics were all so twisted and deep that I truly wasn’t sure who was telling the truth and whether each person we met had something to hide or if I was just being paranoid.

My biggest beef, as mentioned above, was the portrayal of the main character. She fell into the typical stereotype role of a white woman in a thriller novel. A psychologist who doesn’t listen to her own advice and inner knowledge, a woman who can’t tell truth from hallucination due to substance abuse, and a really bad liar who thinks they can play detective WITHOUT cooperating with police even though there’s no reason for it. It irritated me quite a bit and when the typical building blocks of her life start crumbling I felt it was karma for her stupidity. But even with a weak main character, the plot held this book up so well that it’s a small complaint on my end. I also felt that the author queer-baited a bit but then left that string un-explored and that irritated me. Maybe in future novels if we ever revisit these characters we’ll explore that but, seeing as this feels like a stand-alone, I don’t see the point in why there was a set-up with no follow-through.

Overall, a good fast-paced read. I finished it in one day and I enjoyed the journey and all the thrills that came along with it. An impressive debut novel from this author so if you’re looking for a quick thrill, definitely read this one. I gave it 4 stars.