Dark Places

How it reads

Dark Places is thriller (psychological crime thriller, specifically), and its dominant mood is dark. It goes to difficult places and doesn't look away. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in several locations, in the recent past, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are family, loss and grief and secrets. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is dark — no rescue, no neat bow. At 424 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.