The whole time I was listening I was screaming to myself “was it him?”, “or was it him?”, “or him”? I couldn’t stop listening to this book. I needed to know what happen to Chloe and her father all those years ago. Chloe’s father was a convicted serial killer who’s victims were never found and it’s coming up on the 20 year anniversary of the missing girls disappearance and now more girls are going missing. The police don’t believe anything Chloe says and who one of the victims is her patient, the police zone in on Chloe even more. Chloe is falling into trap after trap trying to untangle the web and figure out the truth and who is behind the current murders and if he father was the murderer 20 years ago too.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham
Format :🎧
Rating :⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Pub Date :1/11/22
Thoughts : I received an advance copy of the audio book in exchange for my honest review. I love a “who done it “ thriller and that is what this one was , I was happy that I correctly predicted the outcome of this one. I notice a trend here lately with thrillers where they try to make you wonder if the main character is mentally stable or not . I’m not sure that’s the best way to represent mental health issues . But anyways I highly enjoyed this one . #aflickerinthedark #stacywillingham #macmillianaudio #thrillerbooks #audiobookstagram #audiobook #netgalley #booklover #goodreads

3.5⭐
Oh dear... My head! 😲 This was a good ride, a wild one!

Chloe Davis is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and engaged to Daniel. What haunts her in the last twenty years is her family's past. At twelve, her father was arrested for multiple missing girls in their small town of Beaux Bridge. After her father's confession, and has gone to prison, the family starts to fall apart Chole, her brother Cooper, and their mother eventually ends up in a care facility.

And now it's happening all over again.

I hardly guess the bad guy correctly. I did this time, so please let me brag. 😂 It didn't take long, I thought it was a little obvious, although, Ms. Willingham had me doubt myself because Chloe becomes unreliable so I start thinking it could be He #2, He #3, or He #4. Hell, Chloe is losing it too.

I'm impressed with this debut because it got me hooked for the most part and it was a quick and fun listen with an excellent audiobook. I dropped half a star for the last 15% but will bump it up anyway!

What I Liked:
Unreliable Narrator
Decent twists throughout the story

Issues:
Figured out the killer within the first 40 pages. Soon as they came on the page. 🥴

The audiobook narrator was really good and did a great job portraying Chloe especially as she was spiraling throughout the story.

Reading Between the Wines book review #3/135 for 2022:
Rating: 4 🍷 🍷 🍷 🍷
Book 🎧: A Flicker in the Dark
Author: Stacy Willingham
Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
RELEASES on January 11, 2022!!! GET YOUR COPY!

Sipping thoughts: Can you imagine your father being accused, tried, admitted and found guilty of being a serial killer. A killer of young women at that. It is like every time you get angry or have a and thought you automatically think am I like him. Chloe deals with that every day as well as a mother who has completely checked out and a brooding brother. Her father has been in jail for twenty later and then all of a sudden, the girls disappearing starts all over. Now Chloe must live this nightmare all over again.

Cheers and thank you to @NetGalley and @MacmillanAudio for an advanced copy of @AFlickerInTheDark.

#AFlickerInTheDark #StacyWillingham #MacmillanAudio #NetGalley #advancedreadercopy #ARC #Kindle #Booksofinstagram #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #nicoles_bookcellar #bookworm #bookdragon #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #IHaveNoShelfControl #ReadingBetweenTheWines #fiction #thriller #suspense #mystery #MysteryAndThrillers

I received a free audio book from the publisher Macmillan Audio through netgalley.com in exchange for a honest review.

I really wanted to like this book but I am tired of drug abusing weak female main characters. The mystery was predictable and while there were pieces thrown in to direct your attention it just all felt too simplistic.

I'm not sure if the narrator or the main characters desperation that made me cringe while reading this and hoping it would end soon.

Chloe's father is confessed to killing 6 teenage girls when she was 13 years old. Chloe is the one who found the damning evidence that led to her father's arrest. Her mother distraught tried to hang herself and is now in a nursing home and its just her and her brother. Her brother has commitment issues and Chloe seems to be gullible, easily manipulated and always on the edge of a breakdown.

This is where I had a hard time, you would think that a psychologist, who survived what she did as a teen would have a bit more of a backbone to her than she does. There were just so many things that didn't make sense to me for this character, the fact that she is marrying a man she barely knows, who always seems to be away on a "business" trip and doesn't see that she is an emotional basket case, talking to reporters, so many things. I just couldn't get past. Again I really wanted to like it but in the end I just didn't.

My first read of the new year and it was incredible. This had me on the edge of my seat and it was painful to put this book down. I thought for sure that I had this book figured out, but I was so wrong. Very twisty! This is an incredible debut! I cannot recommend this book enough! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Many thanks to NetGalley, Minotaur Books, St Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for gifting me both a digital and audio ARC of this wonderful debut thriller by Stacy Willingham - 5 stars!

When Chloe was only 12, six teenage girls went missing in her LA hometown. Soon her father was in prison, convicted of killing them. Chloe, her brother and mom were left to navigate their new world where they were hated, and try to make a new life. Twenty years later, Chloe is living in Baton Rouge where she has a private psychology practice and is soon to be married. Once again, her summer is shattered when two young girls go missing.

What a gripping debut! I tore through it and even though I had my suspicions on how it would end, there were so many well-crafted plot turns that had you questioning everyone. The setting was perfect - you could feel the heat and humidity of a LA summer mixing with the tension of the characters. I alternated between the digital copy and the audiobook - I felt the narration by Karissa Vacker was good, but with so many different voices, I felt it could have been improved with another male narrator. This book was purchased by Emma Stone for her to star in - can't wait for that as well as more to come from this debut author.

Whew, this book is one wild ride! I listened to the audiobook in less than a day because it was such a compelling story. It's no secret why Chloe Davis became a psychologist - when she was 12, her father confessed to killing 6 teenage girls and no one in her family has been the same since. But now two new girls have gone missing, and this brings back a lot of unwanted memories and anxiety. As things steamroll to a shocking conclusion almost everyone in the story seems guilty and I found myself changing my theories at every turn. Some of the twists were a little unbelievable, but this is such a gripping and thrilling story that I was happy to suspend my disbelief and enjoy the ride. I would not have guessed Stacy Willingham was a debut author if it wasn't splashed all over the descriptions of the book, she has a great talent and I can't wait to see what she will write next.

The audiobook is narrated by Karissa Vacker, who is one of my favourite narrators because she really brings her characters to life. In this one in particular, she fully embodies how scared and off-kilter the main character feels and makes it seem like Chloe is right there telling you her story.

I am sad to say this will not be a positive review.

Firstly, I want to make it clear that the two stars here is specifically for the audio version. I think if I had read the hard copy I would have rounded up to three stars. I found the narrator to have an exceptionally irritating way of speaking that emphasized everything about the book I was already annoyed by, i.e. the overly serious tone, the narrator's stupidity, poor narrative choices, etc. The slower pace of the audio also gave me more time to dwell on the book's flaws than I would have had I been able to read at the faster speed of a hard copy.

A warning: A lot of this is just going to boil down to the main complaint of "I didn't like this," which sometimes can't be satisfactorily explained or justified. But a lot of it is also that this was one of the most predictable thrillers I've ever read (I predicted EVERY TWIST, including the big one about a quarter of the way in), and it had pretensions of literary greatness to be something not unlike a Tana French book, a greatness which it in no way was capable of reaching. But because it was reaching, it also couldn't just have fun wallowing in the dirt and the scandal like your generic thriller because it was too busy trying to be moving or whatever. Unsatisfactory on all levels in that regard. All the tropes are played straight, and it takes itself SOOOO SERIOUSLY. The author also made the extremely poor decision to have her narrator be yet another substance abusing unreliable female narrator, and I'm just so sick of it. Do better, authors.

This part is a little harder to verbalize, because I'm not sure exactly what I would have wanted in its place, but when you have a main character who is the daughter of a serial killer, why don't you take advantage of that goldmine? We barely get any backstory, no consideration of motive, no investigation into the crimes (we only get two or maybe three victims' names), and the consequences on his kids are limited to substance abuse issues and some mild aversions to intimacy. Real interesting stuff, there.

A completely wasted premise in my opinion.

I seem to be in the vast minority so far in disliking this book, so we'll see what happens when it's released to people beyond BOTM thriller addicts and ARC readers.

[2.5 stars]

I was given an advanced reader copy of this title by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.. a good psychological thriller that kept me engaged until the conclusion and although some of the plot points were. a bit outlandish, I thoroughly enjoyed the narrator.

This was a really good debut.

The main character is somewhat unreliable, which makes you constantly question her decisions and theories over who the serial killer could be. I liked that you had clues along the way, but nothing was ever completely obvious until the end.

Overall, a fast-paced and addictive read.

Definitely worth the read! The beginnings is a little slow, but it picks up with the twists we missed with the second half. Enjoyable, quick read for any thriller fan!

Chloe Davis seems to have finally put the demons of her past behind her. She has a successful practice as a psychologist and is preparing to marry her seemingly perfect fiance Daniel. But due to events in her past, she is anxious, jumpy, and has a dependence on prescription drugs that she prescribes for herself (not in her own name, of course). When she was a child, her father confessed to the murders of several teenaged girls in their small town. He's been in prison ever since. Her mother has been in a nursing home since, so Chloe and her brother Cooper have had to rely on each other for support. Now, teen girls with a connection to Chloe start to disappear and turn up dead all these years later. Chloe knows her father, still in prison, can't be responsible for the new series of killings, but could it be someone obsessed with her father's crimes . . . or her? She tries to get the police to listen to her theories about the case and even does some investigating on her own, but that only draws the attention of the police. As she continues to turn her investigations toward various suspects, it seems likely that the killer is someone she already knows. I enjoyed the suspenseful nature of the book, but I really didn't like Chloe. She jumped to conclusions before she had much evidence, and was always drunk or drugged. It seems impossible that she could hold down a job in her perpetually buzzed state! Also, the story seemed to have a lot of unnecessary and annoying details. For instance, when Chloe went anywhere, she was reminded of (fill in the blank with tons of things that jogged her memory, but didn't really add anything to the story). When she was having conversations with anyone, she would frequently wander off in her head so that the answer to most things she was asked was, "What?" There were enough clues sprinkled throughout to guess the identity of the most recent perp, but many questions were left unanswered. Quite a few young teens were left to fend for themselves at various stages in the book, with no real explanation of what happened (where did Chloe and Cooper go after their father was in jail and their mother in a nursing home?). All in all, too many unnecessary details while not answering some basic questions!

Thank you to Minotaur Books and Stacy Willingham for the complimentary advance readers’ edition of A FLICKER IN THE DARK for an honest review.

A FLICKER IN THE DARK follows Chloe Davis, a practicing psychologist with a dark past. When Chloe was a kid, her father was arrested as a serial killer following the disappearance of several teenage girls in their small town. The impact of this history is something that Chloe is still grappling with twenty years later.

In the present day, teenage girls are once again beginning to go missing. Surely it is a coincidence or a copy cat, but Chloe can’t be sure. This puts pressure on her relationships and her practice, even as things seem to be closing in on her.

This book kept me hooked! This isn’t a book where I always loved (or even liked) the main character. She made bad decisions and wasn’t always reliable, but given the trauma of her past and what we continue to learn about the summer her father was arrested made me willing to give her some grace. She is under an incredible amount of pressure as things escalate.

While I did figure out some elements of the ending, there were some surprises along the way that kept me guessing! I also listened to part of this one on audio and really recommend that as well. Sometimes books which move back in forth in time can be difficult on audio, but I didn’t find that to be an issue here.

This was the author’s debut and it made for a well written, solid thriller. I will definitely be looking forward to what Stacy Willingham brings us next!

4 stars for enjoyment

In A Flicker in the Dark we follow Chloe, an engaged to be married psychologist who is finally getting her life on track. Did I mention her dad is in prison as a convicted serial killer and her mom is non-verbal and living in assisted living home? No? Oh, well - there's that. It took Chloe 20 years to get her life somewhat on track, and now a series of murders extremely similar to the ones that destroyed her family threatens to derail it again. Is this a copycat? Is she reading too much between the lines? or is her dad innocent?

I listened to Macmillan Audio's production from Minotaur Books and was blown away by Karissa Vacker's narration. It made it easy to experience Chloe's internal turmoil, the tension in the story and to follow the story as it was told.

A Flicker in the Dark is a debut novel that delivers. I really enjoyed the suspense, and the character work. The plot was tight and executed well, even though it was rocky in some of its attempts to create doubt in the readers. Willingham plays fair, which I appreciate, I was able to anticipate the twists and solution, but it doesn't bother me. She is definetely an author to watch for!

on a side note, I will be purchasing the book when it's released and that cover is everything!

Disclaimer: In exchange for an honest review, I am thankful to Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of A Flicker in the Dark.

This book was SO good I literally could not stop listening. I had planned to listen to it while eating lunch and could not stop. Every time I thought I had it figured out, there would be another twist. If you like serial killer thrillers, this is a must read. The audio was well done, and very easy to follow. Easy five star from me!

A Flicker in the Dark offered a unique take on the serial killer genre. Having a serial killer for a father is definitely what reeled me into listening to this one, and I wasn't disappointed. I also love a good unreliable narrator, and our girl Chloe is definitely that. I enjoyed the ending but found it had a lot going on, trying to wrap up all the twisty paths the book lead us down. I will definitely read another one of Stacy Willingham's books and loved the narrator of the audiobook! 4 stars.

A fairly predictable story (I guessed the killer very early on) but the plot was intriguing enough to keep me going. This was great on audio and a quick listen!

Dark, twisty, propulsive and great character development. Thrillers are hit or miss for me and this was a hit. I loved it and it creeped me out in all the best ways.