4.5/5 stars

Such Dark Things is a standalone psychological thriller. It is written by Courtney Cole under the pen name of Courtney Evan Tate.

I absolutely love psychological thrillers. So when I found out that Courtney Cole had written one I knew that I had to read this book.

This book was compelling. This book was captivating. I could not put this book down!

This book has two narrators: Corrine and Jude (a married couple in their mid-30s). The book goes back and forth in time (between NOW and about a month before - this latter time period moves slowly forward to the present).

Corrine and Jude live in Chicago. She is a busy ER physician, who works a lot. He is a therapist, who seems to have a more set schedule. Jude has a twin brother Michel. Corrine has a sister Jackie.

This book is a psychological thriller. The book starts with a prologue. There are two first person POVs. 17 years ago something happened in Corrine's life on Halloween. People died. She has blocked out what happened. This is a big part of the story.

I am not always a huge fan of a story going back and forth in time. But I thought that it worked very well in this book, especially since it was all stuff that happened in the last month.

Corrine was an interesting character. She is paranoid and also worried that she might go crazy.

I definitely enjoy a good thriller. In this book there is so much going on. What happened all those years ago? What is happening now? What is she blocking out? I loved it all.

I found the book intriguing right from the start. But how I felt overall would depend on whether there were any good twists. And how the book ended. I was definitely satisfied with both of these things.

There were a bunch of characters of note. I was really fascinated by Michel. He had such an unusual profession given who he was. Also there was a twenty-something named Zoe who worked at the diner where Jude and his brother ate every day. I could not stand her right from the start.

I was so anxious reading this book wondering what was going to happen next. I was on the edge of my seat. I definitely put some of the pieces together. But honestly there were some things that I did not see coming.

I was dying to know how this story would end. This book was riveting. This book was exciting. This book was crazy. This book was chilling. Honestly I could not put this book down. The end made me cry. Overall this was a really good book.

I enjoyed Such Dark Things by Courtney Evan Tate. I didn’t see the protagonist coming at all. Corinne is an ER physician who works long hours. She is married to Jude, a therapist who feels neglected when the demands of Corinne’s job keep her away night after night. But Corinne is also dealing with a trauma that happened when she was 17 on Halloween. During Corinne’s long stretches at the hospital and their opposite schedules, Jude often goes for breakfast and sometimes dinner at his favourite diner with his brother. It is here he meets Zoe. A probacative, outrageous woman who will stop at nothing to try and make Jude hers. Meanwhile for Corinne, strange things are happening, flashbacks and panic attacks. Things that seem to have Corinne question her own sanity. Jude has his hands full with advances from Zoe and as he resists her, her crazy begins to amp up around the same time that Corinne’s troubles intensify. Coincidence? Maybe. I was interested in Corinne’s past and how it intersected with her present. All in all, a satisfying read. Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin (my first!) for my advanced copy.

This book was a regular page turner. The suspense, the interesting plot and events I didn't see coming. What I did not care for were the squiggy details of one of the characters abuse at the hands of her father. It could have been handled in a different way that was less in your face. There were a few shocking sex scenes that I could have done without in a thriller type of story.

In Such Dark Things by Courtney Evan Tate the focus is on two main characters. Ms Tate does an excellent job of taking the reader back and forth in time and the characters view point. Difficult to put down as you really want to know what comes next, and you find yourself wanting to say to the characters not to do something! I was given an early copy to review.

Your first introduced to Corrine, who is a busy physician working in the emergency room. She throws herself into her job to help escape from her past which she herself finds to have some missing pieces. Her father killed two people, leaving her behind as a teenager. All while keeping busy this leaves little time for her husband, Jude which you find out is having an affair with a very young woman named Zoe who is in her early 20s who later admits to having been molested by her foster father. Zoe exhibits many of the common symptoms of someone who has been severely abused as a child, yet Jude is not concerned. All he cares about is his sexual needs. The only thing I did not enjoy was the amount of sex scenes, I'm not a fan of romance novels or anything of that nature so it started to lose my interest at that point. Overall, the book had potential to be great but it kind of went left field into the erotic/romance section. I wish this book kept me more intrigued and had a better more suspenseful ending.

Have you ever walked into a bookstore and ended up in the wrong section? Or walked into the wrong bathroom by accident? That's how I felt reading Courtney Evan Tate's Such Dark Things. Touted as a mix between Girl on a Train and Fatal Attraction, this book is more like Lolita meets the movie American Beauty. And not in a good way. When I hit about the halfway mark through this book and had read one too many sex scenes, I had to look up the author and description of the book. I am not into adult fiction, nor do I enjoy romance novels. This book was written by someone who is also an adult fiction writer (aka R- to X-rated novels) who is writing this book under a pen name, which I normally wouldn't care about. However, this book clearly does not fit into the "psychological thriller" genre as its publisher states.

That being said, the book started off really strong. The first part of it is devoted to Corrine, who is a busy physician working in the emergency room. She throws so much heart and energy into her job that not much is left for her partner and husband, Jude. Corrine also throws herself into her job to escape her past, one that is murky even to herself. Her father killed her two people, leaving her behind as a teenager. As a reader, I was drawn into this story, wondering what happened that fateful night. 

Once the author started focusing on Corrine's husband, however, the book took a sharp detour. Jude is having an affair on the side with a very young woman in her early 20s who later admits to having been molested by her foster father. The young woman, Zoe, argues that she came onto him, which Jude simply takes at face value despite his training as a PSYCHOLOGIST. Zoe exhibits many of the common symptoms of someone who has been severely abused as a child, yet Jude is not concerned. All he cares about is his sexual needs. The amount of ridiculous sex scenes involving Jude and Zoe in this book is so copious that it left me wondering what the heck happened to the plot. I skimmed most of these scenes because they seriously took up SO much of the book, and had little to do with the plot. The scenes were overtly graphic, too, which felt inappropriate in this genre.

I had a lot of hope for this book especially given its strong beginning, but the focus on Jude and his wildly inappropriate (bordering on victimization and abuse in my opinion) relationship with a young woman who has been a victim of abuse her entire life overshadowed the entire book. The ending was just as maddening, and frankly I wished I had stopped reading the book as soon as it started to get raunchy and completely unbelievable. 

Maybe this book would work for readers of adult fiction and romance, but this was not for me. Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley, and the author for an advanced reader copy of this book.

Oh my god! I loved it! This book was phenomenal! What a dark, twisted, sick, fascinating, tragic story this was! I was gripped by this book from page one. Seriously it was brilliant and if you love psychological thrillers, this is the book for you!! Absolutely amazing!

A night filled with youthful exuberance and bad choices changed Abby’s life back in 1992. Guilt ridden over causing the death of her brother, she refuses to allow herself the happiness she doesn’t feel she deserves. She turns her back on her boyfriend, Liam, believing if he knew the truth about her, he would hate her. Twenty years on Abby and her husband Nate are living a typical middle class life, even though Abby is still consumed with grief and guilt over the of of her brother. It doesn’t help that she is reminded of the accident that ended her brother’s life is sitting across the breakfast table from her every morning. Nate is the motorist who stopped that night and pulled Abby to safety, but was unable to save her brother. Still, their guilt is a strange sort of bond. Then Liam reappears, moving in to the same neighborhood and the truth about what happened that night begins to emerge. A powerful novel about guilt and not facing up to the truth