Debut author Stacy Willingham may have given thriller lovers their first “Must Read” novel of 2022 with her twisted and suspenseful tale of secrets and shadows, A Flicker in the Dark.
Dr. Chloe Davis has built her psychology practice on helping young people and teenagers deal with the struggles, trauma, and darkness that, sadly, so many have to work through when they are far too young to be capable of processing such horrific events. Chloe herself knows a lot about darkness like this because her childhood was marked by it. Chloe’s own father had been arrested during the summer that she turned twelve years old and has been incarcerated since that day. Six teenage girls had disappeared that summer, but there had been no one to help Chloe process what she had experienced when her own father was arrested as a serial killer.
It’s now almost exactly twenty years later (Chloe is painfully aware of the impending anniversary), and when a teenage girl goes missing Chloe worries that the timing and similarities simply can not be coincidences.
Willingham has a writing style that keeps the tension level high page after page, and seldom ever lets the reader fully relax. In Chloe, she has given us a fascinating, multi-dimensional character that we worry about, feel empathy toward, get suspicious with, and even sometimes want to roll our eyes or shout at, but she becomes very real through Willingham’s precise hand.
Other characters as well are unique and engrossing, and part of a cast that is just the right size to get to know them all, but without the reader ever feeling lost or confused in the world Chloe and others inhabit. Except, of course, for the confusion the author wants us to feel as we try to untangle the secrets of the past along with these characters.
Willingham also does a seamless job of moving the reader between different timelines where we learn more about the terrible summer of Chloe’s father’s arrest and how that unresolved trauma threatened to derail her college education, and potentially her future career, as well as the new cycle of disappearing teens happening in the present day. The background information from the past enhances the story and provides the reader with information about various characters, their motives, and their motivations, but it never threatens to take over the story or overshadow the events of the present.
This exciting, tension-filled debut can get your year of reading started off with a bang, but it also heralds the arrival of a captivating new voice in thrillers—and it will be a treat to find out what she brings us next!
A Flicker in the Dark is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
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.
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren’t really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?
In a debut novel that has already been optioned for a limited series by actress Emma Stone and sold to a dozen countries around the world, Stacy Willingham has created an unforgettable character in a spellbinding thriller that will appeal equally to fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.
