A Flicker in the Dark
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I’m becoming more and more disheartened with thrillers, because I haven’t read a good one in a while. Please—someone throw a good rec my way and renew my faith in the genre! A Flicker in the Dark does not fall into the ‘good’ category, but since this is the author’s first book, I’ll do her a solid and start with what it had going for it.
Zooming out, it’s a clever concept. The main character, Chloe, wields a very unique perspective. I don’t consider this a spoiler– since it’s on the back of the book and you find out within two pages– but close your eyes if you want to avoid it (or just click out, since I’ve already accrued your page view at this point). Chloe is the daughter of a convicted serial killer and it’s written from her point of view. Kudos to that interesting writing choice. Unfortunately, Chloe does things that are completely bonkers to me and I find her very grating. Daughter of a serial killer or not, stop being so annoying.
My next gripe is difficult to convey without genuinely giving things away, so I’ll be nice and vague about it. The pacing is off. You’re led in one direction for too long only to be jolted around several times. This is compounded by the fact that you’re also moving back and forth between present day and flashback, leading to general convolution. I’ll take the ego hit and admit that I was wrong about the twist despite confidently telling my husband midway through that I knew exactly everything that was happening. I want to like a thriller that fooled me, but it was too jolty and my neck can only take so much in my thirties.
Now, I’m basically doing a compliment sandwich because I’ll also admit that despite the convolution, the author was pretty neat and tidy when tying up plot holes. I originally found this book because I’m a Toaster (aka I listen to the Podcast The Morning Toast and one of the hosts, Jackie Oshry, also hosts a book club podcast called The Readheads Book Club). I listened to their episode on the book and while I totally disagree with them about the merits of the book as a whole, I can concede that the author was meticulous about covering her tracks. She sprinkles in seemingly innocuous details that you retrospectively realize are key to accommodating multiple twists. There’s even a hidden theory that, while not acknowledged in the book, is plausible within the story.
The fact that Willingham did all of that in her first book is impressive, especially while I’m sitting here bookless and criticizing her work. Still, the narration was so superficial to me. The dialogue was unrealistic, Chloe’s reasoning was flawed and eye-rolly, and I swear if I saw her use the word ‘flicker’ metaphorically one more time in the text as a nod to the title, I was going to combust. I still believe in a page-turning book with surprising twists that simultaneously has vivid characters who communicate like real humans. Where are you, book? A Flicker in the Dark receives 2 out of 5 flames.
