The synopsis of this book drew me. It's been a minute since I've read a thriller and when they are well done I really love them. This one sent me scurrying to the Google. Dexter. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Both things I was not familiar with. One a movie the other a TV show. To be fair, I'm not a huge movie person so it would make sense I wasn't up on this older gem. The other a TV show from a cable giant, that I've never had. OK, a bit of research that didn't help me at all really and I dove into this book. And then floundered and futzed about. I sputtered like a transmission low on fluid trying to get up speed and change gears going uphill.

I've gone a read some other reviews and the term 'slow burn' resonates strong with this book. It does not jump up and grab you by the pulse and make you feel like everything is spinning all at once. It more eases into gear and then slowly grinds through the gears. And I'm pretty sure it skips a few. Look at me with these car references and I'm car illiterate. Though I have dealt with leaky transmission fluid and I love driving a stick. Sorry, side rails again. I struggled with this book. I didn't not like it, I didn't love it, it just kinda sits there as this thing I read. It didn't make my heart race and my pulse pound like a thriller should do.

I really don't feel like I know how to review this book. It is an interesting concept that left me sometimes confused, sometimes engaged, sometimes invested, and sometimes lost. I feel like there were ideas that weren't addressed that would have made sense to me. Like the idea of why the detective thinks that the Finder is merely a step away from becoming the killer. I mean to me it's like a totally opposite concept and I didn't get the connection there. Some of the other characterizations did that for me as well. The cloak and dagger was sometimes too vague. The basic root of it all is it is a great story with a good bit of thrill and intrigue. I just feel like perhaps someone more familiar than a Google search with Dexter and The Talented Mr. Ripley would enjoy this a lot more than I did.

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book by NetGalley. I was not compensated for this review and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. I was not required to write a positive review.

I absolutely LOVED this book. Nathan grabbed me right from the beginning. I was hooked. I was afraid it was getting a little gruesome for me -- but it really never went there. He was able to make the story so amazing - that the details of the "found" bodies fit right into the story.

If you’re looking for a novel that will give you the chills even during the mildest of moments, then Find You in the Dark is the book for you. Even when the main character was doing nothing more than taking his daughter to swim practice I felt myself chilled to the bone and expecting the worst to happen.
Have you ever found yourself fascinated by a serial killer? It’s a morbid idea, and yet so many people would have to confess to doing just that – look at the media and it’ll speak volumes about society’s fascination with them. Martin Reese is that fascination brought to an obsessive level. He’s meticulous and creepy and more than a little bit morbid. More than that, he goes much farther than any fan or follower ever would, but he isn’t a copycat killer. That’s a very important thing to be aware of. He’s different.
Warnings first: This novel focuses heavily on a man following the steps of serial killers. I don’t mean he’s repeating their actions, I mean that he’s literally tracking their path, and more important, the bodies they’ve left behind. It’s graphic and creepy on all sorts of levels. There are plenty of potential triggers in this book, so please consider yourself warned.
This book was so creepy. At times I loved it, and at other times I resented it. It was weird, to feel that conflicted about it. Perhaps it’s because I don’t find myself to be obsessed with killers? (I tend to err on the side of paying more attention to the victims, and try to ignore the media about the killers).
Find You in the Dark is eerie and creepy, and sometimes not in a good way. There were fascinating moments, like seeing where Martin was going to go with things, or following the police officer that was trying to solve the case. And then there were times where it got too graphic to actually be considered creepy – the tone was disturbing during some of these scenes, and I found myself wishing they’d just be over.
I do think that this was a well written book, but at times it was hard to separate Martin’s obsession with tracking bodies from the fascination with killers, and I couldn’t tell how ingrained that idea was in the book. It was…off-putting is probably the best way to phrase it. Like I was reading something I shouldn’t have had access to. I didn’t love the feeling, but maybe it’s exactly the sort of novel somebody else is looking for.
I think I liked the first half of the book more than the second, which is ironic. I was so anxious the entire book – waiting to see what happened next that I kept hoping for the later parts. I do think the first half was better written, and that the end was a little bit of a copout, but others may disagree with me there. I will say that it was a unique premise and I have to respect that, even if it completely squicked me out at times.

I received a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review. I really enjoyed this one even though it seemed to drag a bit at times. Our main character is retired and has made his money in the tech world and now as a hobby digs up the bodies that the police haven't been able to find. He only digs up those that are left by well known serial killers and is searching for his wife's sister who was killed twenty years ago. The police are not searching for him at first because he is doing a service to the women's families, but then a fresh body shows up at one of his digs. Now all that he worked for may come crashing down and his family is at risk. Throughout the rest of the book we learn who left the body and what they are wanting our main character to do. The man is tired of bodies being found where he buried them. This one is worth the read if you like thrillers and it reminded me of Caroline Kepnes's You with the stalker elements.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an e-ARC of Find You in the Dark by Nathan Ripley in exchange for an honest review. If you like your mystery fiction dark and foreboding, this is the book for you. Dread seems to be around every corner. Martin Reese, a dot.com retiree, has a strange hobby. He secretly buys serial killer files from an unscrupulous policeman and then intensely studies them until he finds the location of the hidden bodies of the victims. After digging to verify that he is correct, he leaves the remains where he found them and then reports his findings to the police, always anonymously. Detective Sandra Whittal soon becomes suspicious that the person finding these bodies may himself be a killer. And someone is watching Martin and his family! This is a first novel for Nathan Ripley and hopefully there will be more to follow. Well done.

The blurb for this book grabbed me immediately. Anything mentioning Dexter pretty much guarantees I'll take a closer look. This is a dark one, and very original. It is not Dexter, though it shares a main character with a compulsion to do something highly unusual. It's even more of a gray area than Dexter is, however. Martin is not killing anyone... he's simply finding those who have been murdered, effectively both killing hope but giving some kind of closure to their families. And he can't resist anonymously taunting the cops a little bit about it, thinking them ineffective and himself more intelligent. An unusual and grisly hobby, but he's not killing anyone... right?

This doesn't fit well with Detective Sandra Whittal. She has the insider's perspective of the police department, knowing how thin they're spread trying to take down active murderers before they strike again, saving people. Finding bodies that have been hidden for sometimes decades falls by the wayside. Cases go cold, clues are missed. She is not a fan of the disguised voice that calls with the location of long-lost murder victims, and thinks something is deeply wrong with him. Surely he can't be content with staying anonymous and non-violent forever.

Sandra isn't the only person who is bothered by Martin Reese, who has been nicknamed "The Finder". Martin's digs have certainly captured his attention... and now Martin is in the sights of a killer.

This is a chilling tale that left me grimacing at times. There were pages where I found some of the writing awkward and had to go back and re-read it to get the point. This didn't happen enough to curtail my enjoyment much, but it was noticeable. This book has been optioned for the small screen, and I think it would translate well. Maybe a dark, gripping miniseries? Time will tell! This one gets a 3.5 from me, rounded up to a 4. I wish I'd been able to connect a bit more with the characters, but still found it to be a good read.

I received an ARC of this book from Net Galley and Atria Books, thank you! My review is honest and unbiased.

3.5 stars

**I received this book from Atria Books through NetGalley for an honest review.**

Find you in the dark is about a man who is rather unconventional. He has a hobby of digging up old bones and then taunting the cops afterwards for their inability to do their jobs properly. Martin Reese stumbles too far and catches too many eyes in the process.

This was a very interesting book. The author takes you into the heads of several of the main characters which I wasn’t at all expecting. There were some I liked and some I couldn’t handle in the beginning. Martin Reese is the main character who spent more than half of this book being shady.

While a bit slow at times, I honestly liked the mysteriousness of this novel. There were several crazy moments all around as well. I would guess one thing and then after being proven wrong, try and guess another. I can see the appeal of wanting to make this story into a movie or TV show; there are enough WTF moments to keep people entertained for sure.

Martin Reese is harboring a secret that threatens to completely alter his life as he knows it. He knows that his unique hobby is unconventional. That's putting it mildly. Others might see it as downright obscene, but Martin sees it as a kind of public service, an act of vigilantism that only he can perform. He keeps it secret from his wife and daughter. It's easier to keep this part of his life hidden. He's developed a pretty solid routine that helps him separate this piece of himself from the rest of his life. Retirement and a mass fortune from the tech company that he founded certainly help. Now, his years of caution seem to be for naught. Someone has discovered his secret.

Martin's obsession started innocently enough. He carefully took notice of his future wife Erin when he realized they attended the same university. How could he not notice the woman whose sister disappeared and was purported to be the victim of the brutal serial killer Jason Shurn? When Erin realized she was being watched, she approached Martin. Strangely, the two began a romantic relationship and the rest is history. Years later, the couple is married, have a daughter, and seem to be living a picture perfect life. If only Erin knew what Martin did during his periodic "camping trips".

Detective Sandra Whittal has seen a quick rise in her professional life due to a quick instinct and superior record of closing cases. She's been haunted by the work of the Finder, a mysterious person who has taken it upon themselves to dig up the long-lost bodies of murder victims. Some of her colleagues see this Finder as nothing more than a lone crazy person who is not harming anyone by his intermittent antics. If anything, at least some families are finally getting closure. Sandra is not so optimistic. There is something about the Finder's digitally altered voice that sends a chill down her spine. No sane person would investigate decades-old murder cases and dig up the victims' remains. When the freshly murdered body of a girl is discovered at the site of the Finder's latest dig, Sandra is convinced. She must find and stop this Finder.

Find You in the Dark sees author Naben Ruthnum (writing here as Nathan Ripley) present an intricately plotted and darkly thought-provoking thriller that will have you questioning where the line between good and evil truly lies. Both Martin Reese and Sandra Whittal are flawed characters who face grim realities that only add to the intrigue and believability of this novel. At first, I wasn't sure what to make of the novel. Ripley purposefully omits the darker details of the Reese family during the opening portions of the book. This allows for an adequate development of the family dynamic that created even higher stakes when the more traditional thriller elements kicked in later in the story. Beyond being the kind of slow-burning, read into all hours of the night novel I've come to expect of a summer release, Find You in the Dark breaks the mold by providing an intelligent commentary on justice, grief, and good vs. evil. All in all, you really can't ask for more from a serial killer thriller.

Find You in the Dark by Nathan Ripley is about serial killers, fans of serial killers, and those who wish they could cross the line and become a serial killer. So, you can consider this a bit of a dark read.

Martin Reese is a retired IT executive whose meteoric career enabled him to retire very early to spend more time with his wife, Ellen, and their teenaged daughter, Kylie. He loves them, but he spends more time on his hobby than he does with them. And a rather strange hobby it is - Martin buys classified information about different serial killers from a police sergeant relegated to archiving documents. He then uses the information to find the graves of the killer's victims and calls the police to let them know where the body can be found, taunting them that they must not be doing their jobs properly as he found the body rather than the police on the case. He considers himself as someone who is helping the families of the victims find closure, but some of the police disagree.

They have nicknamed him "The Finder", and policewoman Sandra Whittall, for one, fears he will escalate from his ghoulish hobby of finding bodies to placing some himself. Martin's wife Ellen had a sister, Tinsley, who was a victim of a serial killer. The twentieth anniversary of her murder is approaching, and Martin wants to find her grave as sort of a "gift" for his wife, to finally put her mind at ease. But when Martin finds Tinsley, he also finds a fresh body, and the killer is watching him. Uh-oh!!

Things escalate from there (as you might imagine), but I will let you discover what happens for yourself. This is a bit of a slow-burner, and I personally found it difficult to care much about any of the characters. While entertaining for awhile, it got to the point I just wanted to find out how it ends and move on.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Find You in the Dark is a great concept bogged down with poor plotting and characterization.

Martin Reese has a secret. He likes to determine where serial killers bury their victims, dig them up, photograph them, rebury the bodies and then leave anonymous snarky messages for the police telling the bodies’ location. His obsession leads him to marry the sister of one victim and stumble onto a recent victim. As the recent victim’s killer stalks Martin so does Detective Sandra Whittal. She believes Martin has a more serious motive for his obsession than providing closure for the victims’ families.

Even with such a great premise, this book fails on evoking suspense. The first half drags with only the last 10% having any sort of page-turning momentum. Also, none of the characters feel like sympathetic genuine people. Therefore, Find You in the Dark earns only 3 stars.

Thanks to Atria and NetGalley for an advance copy.

I finished Find You in the Dark with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it does have the creepy vibe I'd expect from a thriller, but that gripping need to turn one more page is missing. Despite Martin's 'hobby,' the pacing is very slow for most of the book. Parts of the story are repetitive and Martin's inner monologue was drawn out and much of time, not all that interesting. It reached a point that I found myself enjoying the scenes with Martin's too smart for her own good, teenage daughter more than the disturbing parts of the story. Her sense of humor and sass did add some levity to an otherwise dark and sometimes tedious tale. I think part of my disappointment lay in the way things played out in the book. We know from the blurb that Martin draws the attention of a serial killer, and I expected there to be something of a cat and mouse game between them. That I didn't get that is on me and my own preconceptions, but considering the length of the book, I just expected more. In the end, the story did have a lot of potential and I enjoyed some parts of it, but other parts came up lacking for me, leaving me with a bit of a 'meh' feeling.

Mystery, suspense, serial killers… Is there really anything more needed in a book?

The book was sick, twisted, driven, dark, gritty and exactly what is described with synopsis. If you love the synopsis, you will not be disappointed. Dive in, turn on a lamp, curl up and fall into this rich world the author has created.

The characters were layered beautifully, flawed, vulnerable, and felt very realistic in their motivations. Diving into the mind of a serial killer is fascinating, understanding how they work, think, view the world, and always drive their motivations. Their minds are sick, but fascinating.

This book was exactly the kind of book I was looking for, and yet didn’t even know I needed in my life. It was a slow burn, which I love. I actually appreciated that not every question was answered, and was left for somewhat of interpretation to the reader, generally I hate that, but with this book, I appreciated the subtle nuance of this.

As a debut novel for a fellow Canadian author, Nathan Ripley, I know he will be on my "To Buy” list for each new book he releases into the world.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this opportunity. I received this book as an ARC in return for an honest review.

This was a good book about a man who goes through cold cases and finds the bodies of serial killer victims long after the policy have stopped worrying about them. Then he calls and anonymously taunts the police with the location. For having said that, I expected this to be a much darker story. Too quickly, in my opinion, the story moves from learning about Martin Reese to him being investigated by the police and being hunted by an unknown threat. I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I were more vested in Martin, what he does, why he does it, etc. Sounds cliché, but what was his motivation? Saying it was to help families get closure seems way too simplistic. I want something deep! Despite my own personal question mark, the premise was a good one and the overall writing was well done.

Comparisons to Dexter and to Joe made me pretty excited to read Find You in the Dark, but as with such other comparisons, I was left a little disappointed.

I had a really hard time getting into this book. While I did find Martin to be an interesting character, every time the POV shifted away from him I was kind of bored. I thought the pacing was really slow. I was expecting a good twist or two, but didn’t really find anything surprising. I didn’t find it suspenseful until the final chapters and by then it was kind of too little, too late.

As I mentioned above, I found Martin to be an interesting character (though not as compelling as the characters alluded to in the synopsis). I also liked one of the cops, Chris. I kind of hated all the other characters, though. Martin’s wife was super unlikable and I completely detested Sandra, the detective. She was abrasive and treated everyone around her horribly and I just cringed every time we got her POV.

Overall, I found Find You in the Dark underwhelming. I’m adding a half star to my original rating because I did enjoy the main character and the ending of the book picked up a lot. But, for the most part, I found the supporting characters very unlikable and the story itself was just kind of dull to me.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 2.5 Stars

Nathan Ripley has written such a dark and thrilling book and it was so good!

The characters were so well developed and they had such an amazing role for the plot that he set forth for the book. With the plot there was such an amazing feel while reading it, that it really just set the tone for everything that would happen throughout the book!

The blurb drew me in. I was excited to read a different kind of thriller.

Martin buys old police files and uses them to hunt down the graves of serial killers’ victims that have yet to be found. Once he locates them, he anonymously calls in the coordinates to the police and gloats about finding them when they couldn’t.

It starts out with him locating a grave, calling the police and heading home to pick up his daughter. They return home and arrive at the same time as his wife. The conversations between the dad and daughter, the husband and wife and then all three of them are strange and tedious. I was bored and just couldn’t dredge up the interest to continue.

I voluntarily reviewed an ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher.

I'm between 3 and 3.5 stars.

I had this feeling of pervasive dread while reading Nathan Ripley's Find You in the Dark, kind of like watching a horror movie. I wasn't exactly sure what would happen but the tone of the book was so creepy that I kept reading while waiting for something bad to occur.

Martin Reese is a technology executive who was able to retire very early in order to spend more time with his wife and teenage daughter. But he fills his days in a very unusual way—using police files on serial killers that he buys illicitly, he finds long-buried bodies of their victims and unearths them. Then he calls the police anonymously and lets them know where they can find the bodies, although not without taunting them a little.

He doesn't do this for the glory or for some kind of weird or sexual urge. He does this simply to help the families who have spent years, perhaps even decades, without being able to put their loved ones to rest to get some closure. The only souvenirs he takes from his "digs" are photos, photos which he includes in a computer scrapbook that gets locked away.

One police detective doesn't see Martin's "work" as magnanimous; she thinks that if he's digging up these bodies there must be something else wrong with him. Will he soon lead them to bodies he murdered and buried on his own? She wants to apprehend this individual she has dubbed "The Finder" before he gives them something inexplicable to find.

And that's not the only attention Martin is getting. When he buys the file of infamous serial killer Jason Shurn, whom he believes might have abducted and murdered his wife's sister nearly 20 years ago, and he locates a body, he finds a recently murdered corpse in the same gravesite. It turns out that Martin may be uncovering someone else's kills as well—and they're not too happy about it. How far will they go to get him to stop?

While comparisons to Dexter are inevitable, Find You in the Dark is totally different. It does have a dark, creepy tone, and while it has a similar feel to many other thrillers out there, it definitely has a somewhat unique concept. Ripley knows how to ratchet up the suspense, and even though in the end things turned out a little more predictably than I expected, I definitely wondered where he would take the plot.

I thought this was a good read, although the pacing moved a little slower than many other thrillers. This isn't a book that will leave you breathless, but it definitely will leave you wondering what happens next.

NetGalley and Atria Books provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

DNF @ 25%

I thought the description for this mystery thriller sounded pretty fascinating since it was compared to Dexter. Unfortunately, I couldn't get interested or invested in the story or the characters to continue on with the story.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t think I’ve read anything like this book before and it had a really neat concept. Martin buys old case files and information from a crooked cop and goes about finding and digging up past murder victims, hence why he is given the name, The Finder. Apparently he chooses the wrong serial killer’s victims to dig up because him and his family are soon targets themselves. It’s a face paced, nitty gritty dark dip into the realm of serial killers and those that track them.
It was definitely a good read and I’d recommend.

Martin is a bad, bad boy. Or he would be if he let his dark urges loose. Much like Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter Morgan, Martin has a dark passenger who would very much like to be set free to play and by play I of course mean murder. Luckily for the those around him before young Martin could begin satisfying his homicidal cravings he met a woman, had a child and became a family man. The urges remain so Martin channels his darkness into finding and digging up the bodies of serial killer victims. He takes lots of pictures of the remains to revel in later and is just a little too creepily into the bodies he unearths to be normal. It is clear that Martin is a psychopath always on the edge, letting a bit of steam off each time he finds a corpse. He doesn’t sound like the type of guy you would root for but, much like Dexter, he’s an anti-hero that grows on you and I really was cheering for him.

The story was very unique and becomes a quite complicated cat-and-mouse game with Martin versus the police, Martin versus a serial killer, Martin versus various other jackasses. Martin has a very complicated life! This is definitely an edge-of-your seat, can’t–stop-turning-the-pages kind of thriller. It was exciting, unpredictable, twisty and twisted. If you like your suspense dark and your heroes even darker then this is the book for you.

Thank you Atria Books for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.