Vera Kurian proves she can write about much more than psychopaths in her newest thriller, A Step Past Darkness. This book was a totally different feel than Kurian’s first book, but no less captivating. Picture I know What You Did Last Summer mashed up with Stand by Me and The Breakfast Club and a dash of Stranger Things. But even that doesn’t really capture how twist-y this book is!

About the Book | A Step Past Darkness

Setting

The small, idyllic town of Wesley Falls seems like it should be a great place to grow up. But underneath the surface, the town is full of shady practices and sinister cover ups that are hidden beneath the veil of the town megachurch, Golden Praise. The most devout members of the church have the best status, while the people who are furthest from the church are known as the burnouts. The most elite girls in school are called the Circle Girls, and they wear necklaces with small gems that relate to some unknown hierarchy in the Golden Praise church.

Characters (the Capstone Six)

Maddison is a devout member of the Golden Praise church and a Circle Girl. Kelly is a quirky, brainy girl who recently transferred to the high school from a local Catholic church after it shut down (presumably by the Golden Praise church). James is a burnout from the trailer park who sells marijuana and is secretly best friends with Kelly. Padma is a smart and driven Indian girl who secretly works at the Golden Praise church to save money for college. Casey is the golden boy, loveable football player who is kind-hearted and well-liked. Jia is an eccentric girl who happens to be clairvoyant and works at her mother’s crystal shop.

Plot

Summer, 1995
Six high school students who go by the Capstone Six are brought together to work on a project the summer after their sophomore year. They couldn’t be more different—a devout member of the local megachurch, a quirky bookworm, a cynical burnout, a kind-hearted athlete, a shy brainiac, and an eccentric clairvoyant. They are attending a party in the town mine to examine the old chambers for their project, when they witness something unspeakable. In the wake of the crime, the six vow to take care of the perpetrator of the crime, never speak on it again, and leave the town, the secret, and each other behind.

Summer, 2015
Jia breaks the pact they made twenty years ago to bring the Capstone Six back together. Only now they are five… Maddy has been found murdered, leading to more questions than answers. Was her death linked to the incident that happened that summer twenty years ago? The five remaining gather back in Wesley Falls for the funeral, and are forced to return to the mine and confront the person they thought was dead…

Review | A Step Past Darkness

It’s rare for a sophomore novel to outpace the author’s debut, but in this case I think Vera Kurian accomplished it. I loved her first book Never Saw Me Coming about a student enrolled at a psychopathy study at a university, only someone seems to be murdering the study participants one by one. That book was more of a heart-pounding thriller where you are in the mind of the main character.

In A Step Past Darkness, the story has so much depth and complexity. The dual timelines and the six narrators may sound messy, but this story is tightly plotted and expertly paced. Coming in at 450 pages, I was intimidated by the length, but the story flew by (especially on audiobook!). There wasn’t a single slow moment, and I was at the twisted-finale before I realized it.

The bulk of the story takes place in the timeline in summer of 1995. We are introduced to the Capstone Six as individuals and how they came together. One thing I loved about this book was that the short descriptions of the characters make them seem like stereotypes for high school students from different groups. However, the characters are anything but stereotypical. Each of them surprised me in different ways. I was also pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t a story of six teenagers forced together through tension and unrest. The six may not have selected their group, but they are immediately open-minded and supportive of one another. This was so refreshing!

The 90s lovers out there will also appreciate the fun nostalgia pieces. At one point they are discussing the OJ Simpson trial. At another part, one of them references The Firm workout videos. There are so many moments like this that oriented me back in time to the mid-90s and what it would have been like as a teenager at that point in time.

The setting was steeped with small town lore. The teenagers grew up essentially in this bubble where the Golden Praise church is the powerful part of town. Any rebelling happens quietly, or they face the consequences. The rumor mill is prominent throughout the book. And the mysterious church at the center of it all becomes more ominous the more we learn about it. I’d go as far to call it a cult or at least cult-lite.

The conclusion is twist-y and shocking when you learn exactly what has been going on with the Golden Praise church and the town of Wesley Falls! These six students may be the exact people to change the trajectory of their community, once and for all. I know you are probably wondering how the story wraps up and how much suspension of disbelief is required. And I’m not going to be the one to answer that. You’ll have to read it to find out!

I really enjoyed this book by Vera Kurian. My first read by her and it did not disappoint! I absolutely love multiple narrators and varying timelines! The story took a paranormal turn and I was not sad about it! A bit of a slow burn in the beginning but I didn't mind because the character development was so complete. I really like the descriptive narrative that the author brought to life. The ending could have been better but I still enjoyed this read!

A Step Past Darkness started out incredibly intriguing. The 90s nostalgia was fun, and all the characters are likeable, especially Jia (starting out and ending with her perspective was the best choice). It's marketed as a supernatural thriller, but I would say it rides that line of being marketed as horror as well. Either way, it was quite the slowburn. I think the book was overwritten in the middle by probably about one hundred pages, to the point it almost felt like to me the author didn't know where she wanted to take the story and wrote until she found her way.

It's unclear to me whether or not this book's supernatural elements and church elements are a representation of the author's opinions of church communities. It doesn't matter to me either way because I had my own not-so-great experiences growing up in a church environment, but this could turn off people who enjoy their particular church environments. Where Kurian's beliefs would be important is the middle. If this is a treatise on a church's potential for brainwashing, cult-like behavior, and false idols instead of simply general human greed and power manifested within a church-centered town, then the drawn-out middle part of the book would make more sense considering Maddy's downward spiral post-brainwashed-golden-child-turned-exile—she's nothing without the church. Otherwise, Maddy's life post-teenager didn't need to be mentioned. I would have preferred more explanations about the pastor, especially his origin story, what he is, and his powers, as well, but again, if this book is more about the church, then it wouldn't matter because the way they used the pastor matters more than going in-depth with who and what he is. In that case, he's just a means to an end (a "thing" and not a character), and they would have used anyone or anything else in his place to get what they wanted.

All in all, I liked it, but didn't love it. Slowburns aren't my jam, and with it being marketed as thriller as opposed to horror, people are going to expect it to be faster-paced and more dramatic. However, considering I'm seeing "slowburn" come up the most with the ARC reviews I've seen, and I think someone's enjoyment in this novel would ultimately come down to if they like slowburns or not, I think it's going to be pretty easy for a potential reader to decide if they'll like the concept of this book enough to buy it. Since ARC readers have less to go by with what they're getting into, I'm expecting this book to have steady sales and have a nice following after the ARC reviewing period is over and only people who bought the book/borrowed it from the library submit their reviews.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this book!
I LOVED this!
A coming of age tale with a touch of the supernatural.
I have to admit, the description, cover and title don’t do this book justice. I wasn’t too enthusiastic going in but I was pleasantly surprised. I loved the characters and their dynamics.
I only took 1 star away because there were so many (about a dozen) spelling or grammatical mistakes. Made the book seem a little sloppy. But nothing another pass through an editor can’t fix.
I’ll be looking out for this authors other books

I absolutely love the way this one starts out. Jia has to travel home to help find a body. I love books where someone escapes a small town and then has to come back. So she comes back and immediately leads the cops to a corpse. It is a girl she knew in high school. Then we start learning about Jia and her childhood. Her mom sounds like the coolest mom ever! There is also a creepy mega church. Love that for us readers.
This was a lot for me. There are a lot of perspectives and the dual timeline. I think I would love this as an audiobook.

A small town mostly run by a church. A group of six unlikely friends. A summer spent studying a mine, church corruption, and the supernatural. Then 20 years later, six become five when one of the friends is murdered. After witnessing a horrible crime in 1995, Maddy, Casey, James, Kelly, Padma, and Jia decide they need to split up so as their involvement isn’t found out, but now Maddy is dead. The rest of the group now need to come to terms with what they witnessed and find out how it got Maddy killed all these years later. Vera Kurian has created a character-driven plot with real emotional scenes that the supernatural elements feel real too. The reader gets perspectives from all of the characters as each chapter switches point of view, and the timelines are interspersed enough that the reader only gets information at the most pertinent part of the story. The only downside of this otherwise magnificent story is the length. Kurian allows readers to know every character intimately, but to the detriment of the overall plot. Ultimately though, any mystery reader who likes some supernatural twists should read this!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this title from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a fast and exciting read, following 6 friends who witness something terrible and come back together twenty years later when one of them dies from a supposed accident. I could see this book being for adults or YA or new age readers. What I really could see would be it as a Netflix or Hulu limited series.

Thank you for my copy and for having me as part of the tour!

Thank you to the publisher, Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In 1995, six high school students in Wesley Falls are assigned to work on a summer project. This ragtag group are hardly friends and couldn’t be more different in personalities, but when they witness something terrible at a party held in the abandoned mine and realize they might be in danger as a consequence, they decide to investigate, as the local police, the influential people around town and most importantly the church all seem more interested in covering up what happened. When things go from bad to worse, the group take the only way out they can see – cover up all the evidence, leave town and never contact each other again. Twenty years later however, the group finds themselves returning to Wesley Falls once more – one of them has been found dead under suspicious circumstances and the others must finally confront the truth of what happened all those years ago and finish what they started.

It’s so nice to get back to the thriller genre after so long! I’ve been avoiding high school age mysteries of late since it feels too YA and is just not working for me anymore, but this sounded like something different, with the mystery unfolding over a much longer time period, so I decided to try it out.

The plot and setting were excellent. The author gives the reader a very good idea of the environment and situation in Wesley Falls right off the bat and it set the mood perfectly, indicating that something was definitely not right in this town.

This book was so atmospheric and it was honestly my favorite thing about it – I had to stop reading at one point because it was getting late and I was sure it was going to give me nightmares if I continued.

I did not expect this to take a supernatural twist, especially as the blurb didn’t really hint at it. It’s not a genre I’m particularly fond of so that affected my enjoyment of this book quite a bit. I also felt that this part of the plot was kind of vague – Jia’s ability to see flashes of the future was described clearly enough, but all the rest…just didn’t work for me. The whole small town corrupt cult-like church controlling everything and involved in shady business was very interesting until this twist.

The writing flowed smoothly, which made this rather easy to read and follow. The pacing on the other hand, could have been a bit faster – yes, it was meant to be a slow burn type of thriller, but it was also unnecessarily long and spent way too much time introducing everything and everyone before the actual story began. This book could have easily been cut down by quite a bit.

I did like the dual timeline narration, it was a bit different from what I’ve read in the past. Usually, when it involves the same characters in both timelines the connection is more peripheral and you don’t see the link between the timelines for a good chunk of the book (I’ve seen this mostly in historical fiction), but this was so much more fun with the characters looking back on the events of twenty years ago which have arisen to haunt them once more. There were plenty of plot twists, making this mystery a rather hard one to predict.

It’s uncommon in mysteries and thrillers, but this book actually had such well developed characters! Each of them had in depth backstories both in the past and present timelines and it was easy to get invested in their arcs.

I wasn’t sure how 6 POVs were going to work out, it’s quite a lot of perspectives to handle side by side with a dual timeline to boot, but the author did so really well! It was a little confusing initially from a reader’s perspective with all these characters being introduced one after the other, but things do start making sense after a while and their distinct voices helped a lot with that. It was lovely to see this unlikely group come together and become friends, forming strong bonds over time.

As I mentioned, the ending was not predictable with so many twists and even when it ended, I didn’t trust it had actually finished. I was almost expected a creepy epilogue to reveal that they didn’t succeed after all. It was a good conclusion to this book, if a little rushed in those final chapters, though I did feel like the characters had it too easy in the end somehow.

Overall, this was a thrilling read, and if you’re a fan of the genre, I would definitely recommend this book!

Vera Kurian wrote Never Saw Me Coming, one of my top ten thriller of this decade.
I was excited, a bit fangirling too, to read this one and had very high expectations.
They were all met as I read it in one sitting as I read quite fast and didn’t want to stop reading. It was a bad case of One-More-Chapter and I loved what I read.
The psychopaths of Never Saw Me Coming were fabulous characters, the one in this mix of thriller/conspiracy are up to my expectations.
A well plotted, fast paced and intriguing story that never ceases to tickle your curiosity and bringing into a web of secret agendas.
Loved it and it caused quite a book hangover. I hope I won’t have to wait for 3 years to read the next thriller.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Park Row for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Deliciously Dark And Creepy Multi-Layered Tale Reminiscent Of IT And Stranger Things. This is one of those dual timeline tales where a group of six kids get pulled together as teens to fight off an incredible supernatural evil in their rural smalltown hometown, then as adults have to come back home to end it once and for all. So like I said in the title, pretty well a blatant homage, all these years later, to IT. And of course, some say "homage", others say "blatant rip off". I'll leave that to those who choose to read both my review and Kurian's work. But if you have problems with dual timeline or multiple perspectives... just know up front that this book isn't for you. It is truly a great story, but meh, even I know of what I know to be *phenomenal* stories that even I simply can't read. (Looking at you, Lord of the Rings.)

Where Kurian shines particularly brightest is in giving these characters realistic Xennial (that weird merger of the youngest of Generation X with the oldest of the Millenials) character arcs, and yes, that does include LGBT discovery for at least one character. Again, if that is a problem for you... maybe not your book here.

Particularly strongest for me personally was Maddy's own arc, particularly as a teen, as she is deeply immersed in conservative Christian culture of the early and mid 90s - as I myself was as a male just a few years behind her in the same period and in a similar small town atmosphere. (Here, our kids are Sophomores that school year, and I was in 7th grade that year - so just 3 yrs younger than our characters.) Maddy's arc in some ways has a lot of things that were specific to females in that culture in that era, but in a lot of other ways were common across teenagers of both sexes during this period, and this is where I connected with the story the deepest. Maddy's struggles as she realized what was going on and her role within it, and her desperate attempts to try to change and correct things... yeah, that was the early years of my own young adult form. So again, and particularly for any females reading this - there is quite a bit of discussion and action around purity culture in the conservative evangelical American church circa the mid 90s, including some of its atrocities being actively shown "on screen". If this is something you can't handle exploring in fiction form 30 yrs later (OW!)... maybe not the book for you.

Overall this was a deliciously dark and creepy tale that hit so many strong notes and was so very layered and multi-dimensional... it really was quite a ride. I very much enjoyed it, and I very much look forward to seeing what Kurian thinks up next. Very much recommended.

Do not let the complexity of the characters and plot of this one scare you, once you get through the beginning you may be sucked in like I was. I could not put this one down once I really got into it and had to know what was going to happen to each of the characters. It does have more of a slow burn vibe and is more character driven then plot driven, which I know may not appeal to everyone - for me it really worked. I really enjoyed the overall feel of the book, a wonderful mix of mystery, mystical and horror. I felt like all the characters felt unique and enjoyed seeing their paths throughout the story. I didn't necessary love all of them, but still felt each was authentic. I would definitely read from this author again as I really enjoyed this one and liked the experience of seeing where it went.

Vera Kurian is the kind of storyteller that makes you contemplate at 3 am how much sleep you *really* need to be a functional adult the next day.

Six very different classmates are forced to spend time together over the summer of 1995 - think Breakfast Club but in a creepy town - and witness something horrific which changes their lives for the next 20 years - which is when they return to their small hometown to face what they thought they left behind forever.

Loved this, gave it 4 stars. I read this in two sittings (sleep did win in the end lol), what a rush! It's not a thriller per se, so if you loved Never saw me coming (like me) and expected a conventional thriller - please be aware that it is a bit of a genre blend, though I won't go into specifics so as not to spoil anyone.

Do check it out if you like your books with creepy towns, cults, and unlikely friendship groups.

Thank you to Netgalley and Park Row for the eARC! Because I really enjoyed the author's earlier book, Never Saw it Coming, I requested this book. I was so ecstatic to read this and had high hopes. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this. With so many individuals and timelines to keep track of, it was a very slow burn. It seemed like I was reading it for quite some time without really getting anywhere. Typically, I enjoy books with multiple POVS and characters as well as timelines, but this one lagged because it seemed like there were too many details and points of view from every individual. For me, the book was simply excessively long and not swift enough-paced. This wasn't my cup of tea.

This is an interesting book that really had a lot crammed into it. Very character driven, which isn't typically my thing especially in mystery/thrillers, but by the end of the story I did feel really connected to all of the characters and invested in their stories. The speculative elements also aren't normally my thing but didn't detract from my enjoyment. While I respect the project that writing this book must have been, I think my appreciation for the story outweighs my enjoyment of reading it in the moment. I'd definitely recommend it to readers in for a slow-burn, character-driven mystery with slight paranormal elements and who are also okay with discussions and critique of religion. While I haven't had a favorite book from Vera Kurian yet, I'm curious to see what she continues writing in the future because this was an interesting read and felt really different from her previous book in an intriguing way.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this. At first, the multiple points of view with varying timelines was a little hard to keep up with but as I continued on, I fell into the groove and ultimately found that these characters were well developed and it was nice to see how they grew.

This story had more of a supernatural edge that I wasn’t anticipating and while it was interesting to see this kind of take, at times I felt there could’ve been more depth brought into it.

I overall enjoyed this book and following the adventures these characters went through!

I generally enjoy novels that have dual time lines, multiple characters, tricky plots and a satisfying resolution. I don’t generally go towards the supernatural and that is definitely part of this one. Those who enjoy this genre may well want to read this long novel. It will definitely keep its readers busy on a winter night.

Many thanks to NetGalley and HTP for this title. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy of this book. I really enjoyed this author's first book a few years ago and the premise of this book held a lot of promise. Unfortunately, this book wasn't my favorite. First, there were too many characters and points of view. Second, I definitely thought the book was too long and I like a long book, but I don't think this book needed nearly 500 pages to tell this particular story. Ultimately not my favorite, but I would still read this author in the future.

This feels like a plot already read, but with differences, of course. It feels like "I Know What You Did Last Summer" in some type of way. When you put a group of mis-matched students together, of course there is going to be chaos. Someone is going to blab. Someone always does.

I wasn't enamored with this one. It was well written, the characters developed, but there were a points in which I was bored.

I read this author's previous book "Never Saw Me Coming" and absolutely loved it. It made me laugh with it's sarcastic wit. Therefore, I was excited to read this new book, expecting to experience some of the same. Unfortunately, this one was nothing like the previous book, and it fell short of my expectations. It was a slow burn for the entire book. It went back and forth between past and present, and was told in the POV's of all of the main characters:
Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch
Kelly, the bookworm next door
James, a cynical burnout
Casey, a loveable football player
Padma, the shy straight-A student
Jia, who’s starting to see visions she can’t explain

The premise sounded good : "There’s something sinister under the surface of the idyllic, suburban town of Wesley Falls, and it’s not just the abandoned coal mine that lies beneath it. The summer of 1995 kicks off with a party in the mine where six high school students witness a horrifying crime that changes the course of their lives."
It was reminiscent of the book IT in that the ragtag group of kids comes back as adults to the mine to end it once and for all. I also liked the idea of this collection of individuals who would never normally have anything to do with one another, working together on this.

I really wanted to like this book, but for me, it was just a little too slow, a little too strange, and way too long.

I am so thankful to Harlequin Trade Publishing, Vera Kurian, and NetGalley for granting me advanced access digitally and physically to this twisty thriller before it's set to publish on February 20, 2024.