Jaq Evans' "What Grows in the Dark" is an enthralling thriller centering around Brigit's quest to unravel the mystery of her sister's vanishing. The novel is excellently crafted, featuring a compelling narrative rhythm and captivating character development.

I enthusiastically endorse "What Grows in the Dark" for anyone who appreciates a well-executed thriller. Evans proves to be a noteworthy author in this genre, and I eagerly anticipate her future works.

My appreciation goes to HTP (Harlequin Trade Publishing) and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and provide feedback on this engaging book.

Brigit lost her sister many years ago and has never gotten over the pain. She is a character of contradictions, as she works as a psychic, one who is a phony. She also uses her sister Emma as her guide to the other side. Is this her way of keeping Emma’s memory alive or is Brigit just someone who does whatever she needs to do to survive?
Ian is her cameramen and partner. As close as they are, friends only, there is still a huge wall between them.
Her sister’s old girlfriend, Alicia offers her money to return to her hometown of Ellis Creek to find two missing people using her psychic abilities.Brigit should’ve grabbed Ian and run in the opposite direction, but she is sucked in by thoughts of Emma. Things get scary very quickly, and once Ian is used as bait, well things get very real and not for any pleasant reasons. Something ancient lives in the woods, and it’s waited a long time for Brigit to return.
Oddly enough, I’m not sure how I felt about how this book ended, but it definitely was an enjoyable and creepy journey.

What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans is a horror novel coming out March 5th, 2024. I got an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review of the book.

Which, in short, is that it was amazing.

The book opens on youtuber duo Brigit, an emotionally unavailable but deeply charismatic scam psychic pretending to be guided by the ghost of her long-dead sister Emma, and Ian, a mostly-optimistic cameraman who came up with the idea for their youtube series. Together they travel the country (a transient lifestyle that particularly suits Brigit’s restlessness and emotional distance) pretending to help people who believe they are afflicted by ghosts or other problems for which one might decide they need a psychic. For a fee, of course.

Between gigs, Brigit gets a call from the small town she grew up in, the town she lived in when her older sister died. Alicia, an ex-girlfriend of Brigit’s sister, grown now and still living in town, wants Brigit’s psychic help solving the disappearance of two teens, and she’s prepared to pay Brigit and her cameraman much more than their standard rate if they’ll come, because the disappearances seem to be linked to Emma’s death all those years ago.

Because they don’t have anything else lined up, because Alicia is offering them a lot of money to make a simple trip, because their youtube channel is not exactly thriving and the pair’s dreams of network syndication have so far failed to come to fruition, and because Ian pushes for it a little as a chance to learn more about his perpetually-distant friend, Brigit agrees.

They arrive in Ellis Creek and Brigit finds herself in the center of a web of her own unhappy memories, deceptions such as Alicia revealing that she is actually the lead detective on the hunt for the missing kids, small town drama, and deeply unsettling experiences that Brigit can’t quite dismiss as mere hallucinations brought on by poor sleep and high stress. As Ian and Brigit investigate, meeting with more locals from Brigit’s past and making what connections they can, things in Ellis Creek only grow stranger, and more dangerous.

Aside from being an exciting, unnerving, and well-plotted book, aside from having characters who felt tangible and complex and real, I loved the writing in this book on a line level. Jaq Evans writes with a visceral clarity that several times had me copying out lines to go “Ooooh” about at my leisure.

Brigit was presented from the start as a complicated character, difficult to get close to, difficult to like. She closes herself off from people emotionally, pushes away at Ian’s attempts to deepen their friendship despite knowing him for some time and literally traveling the country with him, and makes her money by scamming people. Brigit also has an almost uncanny ability to read people, and a keen sense of and regret for her own shortcomings that does not feel performative but genuine. In the first chapter we are introduced to Brigit unequivocally faking a séance, but we also see her doing her best to offer any thread of legitimate help or support she thinks her young client needs. The whole comes together to create a complex woman who has experienced trauma at a young age and has reacted to it by closing herself off from the world—but who also does, on some level, want to help people. She’s not exactly likeable, but she’s understandable, and she’s easy to root for, too.

The POV switches between Brigit and Ian. At first I found Ian a slightly less compelling character than Brigit, but the more I read of him the more his own conflictions and complexities became clear. He’s a character of contradictions, first in the way he differs from Brigit; he wants to be close to Brigit, he wants to be likeable, he doesn’t have the almost uncanny ability to read people that Brigit has, he’s more optimistic. Both Brigit and Ian see themselves as more fundamentally flawed than they are—but it seems to me that Brigit feels more self-recrimination about this whereas Ian gives me the impression of having a little more distance from it, in part because the parts of Ian’s self that he doesn’t like all come back to his dad, a character who is never actively present in the book but who it is revealed first through implication and later through more concrete references to have been an abusive parent. And the narration sets up certain small expectations about Ian that it then turns around on the reader, for example when the two filmmakers have to get checked out at the hospital, Ian has no worry at all about the cost and considers paying for Brigit’s bills as well, only rejecting the idea because he knows she would not want that. From this, for a brief time, the reader might think that Ian comes from a place of privilege. It’s only over the course of the book that the narration reveals that Ian only has any money because of the death of his mother, and the cause of his mother’s death is one of the very few points in the book that I was not very clear on (and also, in the grand scheme of the book, not very vital to know, so in the end it didn’t bother me that I was not very clear on that piece of Ian’s history).

I loved the introduction to Ellis Creek coming from an Ian chapter. As a reader who has never been to this town in this world that Evans created, entering it the first time from the point of view of the character who did not grow up there, who was seeing it as an outsider, made that moment feel so vivid and real.

The scares in the book were uncanny and unsettling, from experiences that Brigit did not know whether to dismiss as hallucinations or fear as malicious visitations, to the fear of the unknown when the characters first delve into the woods at the heart of this story, to abrupt moments of shocking violence, and any time the entity in the woods interacted directly with the characters—whether from within in one of the most absorbing possession scenes I’ve ever read or face to face in the deep dark woods.

I loved the possession scene in this book. Brigit’s frightening visions before and after going into the Dell are uncanny and eerie and unsettling, just top-tier spooky vibes for Halloween-time when I was starting this book. But the possession scene is one of the moments in this book that outshines all the scares leading up to it and really gives the reader something to feel viscerally horrified about. It’s done from the perspective of Ian, who has been possessed by a birch-sapling-monster after spending a night in the Dell. Reading his experience of the possession, feeling his body and hearing his words, doing and saying things outside of his control, the violation of it and on a level he doesn’t want to acknowledge is a thread of something that is not really satisfaction—he doesn’t like or appreciate the way the creature is making him treat Brigit and the others, but it’s also saying a lot of things he has thought, wondered, or even wanted to say and decided better. And then, to realize that the act of possession he had endured was not even about him, that this violation of his body and voice and self was just in the service of hurting someone else, was such a profoundly upsetting moment.

Now I’d like to touch on how I enjoyed the queer representation in this novel. There’s Alicia, who is introduced as a former girlfriend of the late Emma, and who still lives in Ellis Creek working as a detective and trying to help the people in the town. There’s Brigit herself, who, though she uses she/her pronouns for the sake of convenience, is nonbinary and briefly mentions that there’s pain in knowing that Emma will never know that her younger sister also sometimes dates women and that the queer identity is something they could have shared. And there’s Sam, a former classmate of Brigit’s and a friend of one of the missing teens, who is a trans man. One of my favorite things about this queer representation is that it is allowed to be messy. I can’t speak to whether or not Evans felt the pressure many LGBTQ+ authors feel, to write queer characters who are paragons of virtue in an effort to shield the community from prejudice. I can say that if Evans did feel this pressure, the book does an excellent job of moving past that restrictive paradigm and gives the reader queer characters who are complex, messy, with faults and with less virtuous sides, and who are all the more relatable for it, and who are still trying to do their best just like everybody, and who the reader still roots for.

One potential pitfall of any supernatural horror with monsters in it is the moment the monster is revealed. It’s a make-or-break moment, and there are so many ways to stumble over it. The movie Mama, for example, falls into a couple of those traps—the monster is revealed too soon, and the monster is not scary enough to carry the rest of the movie after that moment. What Grows in the Dark avoids that pitfall. There is a scene in the woods that involves all of the characters except Brigit, when something horrifying happens just behind Ian, and that was a delightfully creepy-crawly moment.

The other place that I feel horror can struggle is with endings (there was a reason a running joke in 2019’s It Chapter Two was that Bill Denbrough’s endings suck). If the evil is defeated too tidily it feels a little trite. If everyone dies, it feels too grim. Without giving any spoilers, I think that the ending of What Grows in the Dark walks the line between those potential issues in a way that is very compelling, and in a way that leaves the reader thinking not only about the complexity of fighting evil forces, but the complexity in moving on with one’s life after a traumatic event.

The plot threads all came together beautifully, the scares ranged from eerie and unsettling to crawling-skin upsetting, the pacing kept me turning pages, and the character writing was complex and nuanced and compelling. Overall, I’m happy to give What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans five stars

"What Grows in the Dark: A Spine-Tingling Journey into the Heart of Horror"

Jaq Evans' "What Grows in the Dark" emerges as a chilling contemporary horror novel, weaving a spine-tingling and atmospheric tale that captivates readers from the first page. This gripping narrative combines elements of paranormal investigation, family tragedy, and eerie suspense to deliver an unforgettable reading experience.

The story revolves around Brigit Weylan, a phony spiritualist traveling the country with her cameraman, Ian, to investigate and debunk paranormal activity. Evans skillfully introduces us to Brigit's world, where the line between the supernatural and reality blurs, setting the stage for a narrative filled with mystery and dread.

Brigit's life takes a terrifying turn when a call from her hometown, Ellis Creek, pulls her into a case involving two missing teenagers. As she delves into the investigation, unsettling parallels to her older sister Emma's death emerge, creating a web of dark secrets that gradually unravel.

Evans excels in creating a haunting atmosphere, making Ellis Creek itself a character in the story. The eerie woods and sinister occurrences serve as an unsettling backdrop, immersing readers in a world where reality is questioned alongside the characters.

The author's writing is evocative, with vivid descriptions that bring the unsettling world of the narrative to life. The characters, especially Brigit, are well-developed and relatable, adding depth to the story. Brigit's complex mix of skepticism and vulnerability makes her a compelling protagonist, while Ian provides a balanced perspective as he grapples with the inexplicable events surrounding them.

Themes of loss, guilt, and the enduring power of the past to haunt the present are expertly explored in the novel. Additionally, the complexity of sibling relationships and the lingering effects of childhood trauma add layers of depth to the narrative.

"What Grows in the Dark" is not just a suspenseful horror novel; it's a psychological thriller that will leave readers questioning the boundaries of reality. Jaq Evans has crafted a story that lingers in the mind, creating a sense of unease that persists even after the final page. A must-read for fans of atmospheric and psychological thrillers, and a testament to Evans' skill in the genre.

Overall, this book is a gripping and well-written thriller that establishes Jaq Evans as a writer to watch. This book comes highly recommended for anyone who loves a captivating and chilling exploration into the heart of horror.

Many thanks to NetGalley and MIRA for sharing this gripping thriller's digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

Brigit Weylan and Ian Perez are partners in a You Tube ghost hunting-type show where Brigit is a fake psychic and the two claim to cleanse houses of harmful haunting. Brigit is contacted by Alicia Nguyen, her sister Emma’s old girlfriend, requesting Brigit’s help in Brigit’s hometown of Ellis Creek, Virginia. Emma died sixteen years ago.

Now two kids, James Milroy and Gabrielle Markham have disappeared and Gabrielle had been having dreams about Emma before she vanished. Add to that, Brigit is seeing things, getting phantom phone calls from Emma and suffering from lapses in time. What is Ellis Creek’s problem with missing children? And what is this mysterious place called The Dell that fascinated James and was a large part of Brigit and Emma’s childhood? Can Brigit and Ian solve these mysteries or will they become victims like so many others?

This book was difficult. The prose was disjointed, the plot kind of meandered and the whole thing just seemed like a number of ideas thrown together with no real cohesion. I wanted to like it, but I’m sorry to say that I didn’t.

What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans is a gripping thriller that follows the story of Brigit, who is trying to uncover the truth about her sister’s disappearance. The book is well-written, with great pacing and intriguing characters.

Overall, I highly recommend What Grows in the Dark to anyone who loves a good thriller. Jaq Evans is a writer to watch, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

Thank you to HTP (Harlequin Trade Publishing) and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

In this chilling contemporary horror novel, a phony spiritualist returns to her hometown to assist in an investigation that eerily mirrors her sister’s death, forcing her to confront the secrets she’s been running from.

Very atmospheric, chilling, and well-written. I really enjoyed all the characters and the plot twists. I would definitely recommend this to my horror friends.

I was excited to be approved for What Grows in the Dark after hearing an interview with the author. I really liked the premise and thought it was well executed and spooky. It touched on themes of guilt and grief.

This was GOOD!! There were parts that didn't quite add up, logic-wise, so I recommend reading this one super fast and not thinking about all the ramifications of every twist or piece of lore too deeply, but the ending really delivered. Midway through I wasn't really sure about my rating, but that ending stuck the landing in a shockingly assured way. I think fans of Erin E. Adams's 'Jackal' will find fascinating resonances with this book, too, though in many ways they're very different works.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of What Grows in the Dark.

I really liked the premise which is why I was excited my request was approved.

Almost two decades ago, Brigit's older sister, Emma, walked into the woods and never returned, As a result, Brigit left the small town and never returned. Until now.

Now, Brigit is a phony paranormal investigator traveling the USA with her friend and producer, Ian. When the disappearance of two teenagers in Ellis Creek compels her to return home, she discovers a shocking link between the missing teenagers and Emma.

Now, it's up to Brigit to face the horrors of her past, and perhaps her sister.

Sadly, this didn't hit the mark for me as I had hoped.

First, not once was I scared or creeped out. I never understood the reason why the woods was haunted nor was it fully explained.

Was it like Derry, Stephen King's famous fictional town and home of Pennywise?

Was the woods haunted by a spectral ghost or wood sprite? If so, why? Where did it come from?

Why was Emma obsessed with it? Why her?

Second, neither Brigit or Emma were interesting or compelling characters. In some books, the deceased characters take a life of their own and sometimes I find them more interesting than the living.

Not here. I didn't like or care about anyone. I did like the diversity of characters, but I didn't find them likable or want to hang out with them in real life, if I could.

Third, the narrative wasn't suspenseful, just a lot of Brigit hearing her sister's voice and feeling spooked and mulling over what she could have done years ago (not much since she was just a child), and what to do now.

The narrative was kind of muddy, like the author wasn't sure what the story was really about, and the lack of a strong main character didn't help.

"What Grows in the Dark" by Jaq Evans is a chilling contemporary horror novel that delivers a spine-tingling and atmospheric reading experience. Blending elements of paranormal investigation, family tragedy, and eerie suspense, this book keeps readers on edge from start to finish.

The story revolves around Brigit Weylan, a phony spiritualist who travels the country with her cameraman, Ian, to investigate and debunk paranormal activity. Brigit's life takes a terrifying turn when she receives a call from her hometown, Ellis Creek, where two teenagers have gone missing. As she delves into the case, she discovers unsettling parallels to her older sister Emma's death sixteen years ago.

The author skillfully weaves a web of mystery and dread, gradually revealing the town's dark secrets. The suspense builds steadily as Brigit's past collides with her present, and the boundaries between reality and the supernatural blur. The sense of foreboding is palpable, and readers will find themselves questioning the very fabric of reality along with the characters.

Evans excels in creating a haunting atmosphere, with the town of Ellis Creek becoming a character in itself. The eerie woods and sinister occurrences create an unsettling backdrop for the story. The writing is evocative, with vivid descriptions that immerse readers in the unsettling world of the narrative.

The characters, especially Brigit, are well-developed and relatable. Brigit's complex mix of skepticism and vulnerability adds depth to her character, making her a compelling protagonist. Ian, her cameraman, provides a good balance as he grapples with the inexplicable events unfolding around them.

The novel explores themes of loss, guilt, and the power of the past to haunt the present. It also delves into the complexity of sibling relationships and the lingering effects of childhood trauma.

"What Grows in the Dark" is a suspenseful and haunting horror novel that will appeal to fans of atmospheric and psychological thrillers. Jaq Evans has crafted a story that lingers in the mind long after the final page, leaving readers with a sense of unease and a thirst for more of the author's work.

Very spooky with a setting that was very much a character, along with a fantastic cast. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time and two nights in a row, stayed up late so I could get to the end. Overall a great read!

Lots to dig into about grief, blame, and small town culture.

It’s been 16 years since Emma disappeared in the woods near her hometown. People always said she had emotional problems as a matter fact, prior to her disappearance, she told people she thought there was a monster in the woods. Her sister, Brigit left town and found a new life investigating paranormal occurrences around the country with Ian, her cameraman. Then one day she gets a call from her old hometown, two teenagers are missing, and she and Ian become caught up in the case. There are more than a few similarities between these current disappearances and what happened to Emma. Soon, Brigit begins to fear for her own sanity as she sees things that simply can’t be there and hears