This was an incredibly interesting premise and skillfully handles the delicate task of grieving the past while also moving towards the future. I would have loved a bit more exposition on the mechanics (i.e. time travel, the dark place) but it did not distract from the central theme and Hylee's journey.

I was so excited to read The Dark Place by Britney S. Lewis.
I enjoyed reading this YA novel. The characters were engaging and the the story was a slow-burn interesting read.
I personally thought the writing was great. Lewis, held my attention throughout and kept me turning the pages.
A very interesting time-travel story. that I thought was both intriguing and different.
Like most have said below, I do agree that this is not a horror story. I was like most of the readers kept waiting for that horror factor and it never came.
But other than that I enjoyed reading her newest novel. I am defiantly going to be checking out this authors previous titles.

I think that many YA readers will really enjoy and get into The Dark Place.
And I look forward to reading her next title.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Disney Hyperion for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

The Dark Place is an interesting twist on time travel, and includes the idea that changing the past changes the future, in ways often impossible to predict. Hylee is 8 years old when her world is turned upside-down: in the course of a shooting in her home, her brother vanishes. No one knows what happened, and no trace of her brother is ever found. In the aftermath, her family loses their home, and Hylee loses her grounding in her life. IN an attempt to help her find herself again, her parents send her to live with her father's mother, whom Hyle calls Grandmommy, when she is 17. But instead of finding herself, she finds her ability, and another time traveler who helps her understand her ability.

This novel deals with loss, change, and adolescence, as well as family problems, especially the type of family problems that follow a tragedy. The metaphysical problems involved in time travel both highlight and compound those issues for Hylee, as she struggles to find herself while adapting to living with her Grandmommy, attending a new school, and making new friends, while trying to keep up with her family and friends from her original neighborhood about an hour away.

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

Hylee has a traumatic experience when she is young, and her brother is missing since that day. Then one day Hylee herself goes missing, she somehow ends up in a Dark creepy world that seems to have grown around her old childhood home.

Hylee is sent to stay with her grandmother after this happens, both her parents and her friend are struggling with the fact she disappeared in front of them.

But here, Hylee meets Eilam, who also witnesses her disappearing but is not scared away by this. In fact he is keen to help Hylee understand things better.

Could controlling this strange power and using it to navigate the dark place, help Hylee fix her fractured family?

I really enjoyed this book, finished it within a 24 hour period. Only thing I did think is that the end was all wrapped up a bit quickly but otherwise a creepy keep you wanting more story.

Gave me vibes like Silent Hill or Stranger Things, with a hint of Us. Thanks to NetGalley and Disney Hyperion of the early copy of this book, review not influenced by this

“The Dark Place” surprised me. I read the author, Britney S. Lewis, first book “The Undead Truth of Us”, and while I enjoyed her first novel I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did. I don’t tend to do written reviews, my reviews are more video based but I will say for netgalley, if you liked Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why(for the high school drama) and throw in a dash of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, then you will enjoy this book. It’s a quick read, and it feels quick. Lewis really paced the book well, it does not really slow down at all.

If I had to nitpick I could, and I will do that for the video review but for this, go ahead and read it. You are going to enjoy your time spend with Hylee, the main character. you’re not going to regret it.

So, what I was expecting when I picked this book up was to read about a teenager being haunted by some sort of entity or evil dimension. What it actually is is a book about family and loss. It is also about how we process our emotions in dealing with that loss. I feel like this is becoming a theme with a lot of books lately, especially horror and paranormal books.

The Dark Place is about Hylee Williams, her relationship with her missing brother, her estranged parents, and the event that changed their lives forever. When Hylee was nine years old, her brother went missing. Did he run away or did he just disappear? That’s the question that plagues Hylee for nine years after the last time she saw her brother.

Now, what kind of character is Hylee? She’s a typical teenager going through emotional problems. She feels like no one tells her the truth because she is a child, and instead of finding someone to talk to about her emotions, like all grade-A Americans, she keeps it locked inside until she feels like she’s about to explode. She’s a very relatable character.

Her relationship with her brother is one of the highlights of this book. It’s refreshing to read about a sibling relationship that isn’t full of fights, arguing, and attitudes. Bubba is the big brother everyone should have. I just wish we would have gotten a little bit more of their relationship shown to us in the book. I felt their unique bond. I just don’t think I was as emotionally invested as I could have been.

This leads me to Hylee’s other important relationship in this book. Eilam is the nicest of nice guys, but, like Hylee, he is also full of teenage angst. The emotions were out of control! I will probably blame Hylee for this though because he only seemed emotionally out of balance in reaction to her. Otherwise, he was as cool as a cucumber. I didn’t really like his “secret”. It felt a little juvenile. Actually, Hylee’s reaction to it felt more juvenile than the actual secret. I can’t blame her though as she’s emotionally underdeveloped due to losing her best friend in Bubba. But, this just proves the point even farther that Hylee was Eilam’s catalyst to emotional shenanigans.

But, just like Hylee and Bubba’s relationship, her relationship with Eilam felt underdeveloped emotionally. I just wasn’t hooked all the way. I was dangling at the end of the rope and made the decision to stay. I didn’t feel like I needed to stay because my book-life depended on it.

The other characters in this book were underdeveloped as well. The side characters were very distant. Even Hylee’s family were shadows of the main storyline. Grandmommy was the only family member that got a small amount of personality.

The first eighty percent of this book was a gothic dream. I was fully invested in the mystery of Hylee’s situation. The climax and ending of the book took a turn I wholeheartedly expected it to take. It was predictable. But, that is not a condemnation. The ending of the storyline was satisfying, but the climax of the story felt rushed. Hylee needed to struggle just a little bit more to get her happy ending. I realize she had already been through a lot. However, she learned how to do things too quickly, and the solution to her problem fell in her lap. She got a first place prize for just showing up.

All that said, I still really enjoyed this book. It was an easy and satisfying read.

3.75 / 5


Review will post to my IG page on Wednesday August 9, 2023.

I have three major issues with this book.
1 the book has this lying throughline and to say it was handled without nuance would be an overstatement.
The books could have spent real time talking about how black families sweep trauma under the rung no matter how much it's impacting them, but it completely bailed on that (we'll get back to the parents in a sec) and instead kept trying to push this idea that people you just meet are entitled to all of you so if you don't tell someone something because you don't trust them or aren't comfortable, you're actually a bad person. And that alone was enough to make this something I could never recommend.

2 The parents. The books did acknowledge how the parent's behavior was hurting Hylee but was not only avoiding actually saying they were bad parents, but made Hylee apologize for leaving her parents neglectful home. But When things get more complicated than you're prepared for, you don't get to opt for parent lite and still get to be called a good parent. They're putting their comfort and feelings over her needs. If is was money the situation would be "I don't have the tools so I will send her to someone that has the tools and still not neglect her." this is "I don't have the tools so I'm giving her to someone else that doesn't have the tools so I don't have to be the one to try and figure this out."

3 The forced twelfth night quote and even more forced resolution for it made me hate this book
1 star

I was so excited to receive my copy of The Dark Place and while I did find the story to be intriguing, I just couldn’t fully get into it.

I really struggled with the pace of this one. There’s so many pages of quite mundane detail especially in the middle that I did find myself skim reading bits because I just didn’t find that it added anything to the story. The actual imagery was really good. I was able to picture the horror parts really well thanks to Britneys writing and I really enjoyed the thrilling parts. It just felt like there was a huge buildup and then everything happened over the last couple of pages.

I didn’t really connect to Hylee as a character. I felt sorry for her because she had such a crappy childhood after her brother goes missing. Her parents and grandmother are really quite terrible and I didn’t understand the constant “don’t talk about it” attitude from them. Like stop being neglectful already. I also didn’t really get any connection between Hylee and Eilam. They just seemed to have the time travel thing in common and then all of a sudden they like each other.

I also struggled with parts of the writing style where the inner monologue used partial sentences. “Went to the kitchen. Picked up a glass” as examples instead of “I did this etc”, it really pulled me out of the story.

Altogether the premise was really interesting but just wasn’t right for me.

Thank you so much to Penguin Random House for sending me this ARC and also for the eARC on NetGalley! This was a great YA horror!

The book follows seventeen year old Hylee whose life was changed nine years ago when a tragic incident occurred and her brother disappeared without a trace. In the present tense Hylee has moved to her Grandmother’s to finish High School because she has started “disappearing” into thin air and her parents don’t know how to cope. Whenever she disappears she lands in a dark alternate reality that replays that tragic night nine years ago over and over again and she thinks it might be the key to discovering what happened to her brother. She meets Eilam at a party and they have an instant connection, better yet, her “disappearing” doesn’t scare him. As they spend time investigating time travel and alternate universes, a beautiful romance blossoms between them.

Before I start on my review I wanted to share this weird tidbit about myself that I personally have never been able to understand and have never met anyone else who experiences this. When I dream I always go to the same “alternate universe” where everything is very similar to how it is in my real life except I have another younger sister, all the rooms are a bit wider and the layout of my hometown is slightly different. Everything is exactly as I left it when I go back to dreaming, I don’t pick up where I left off as such but I can remember experiences in this universe, I can literally walk/drive to different places in the universe and if I put something in a drawer I can find it again in another dream. There is so much I could go into with this because I’ve had 26 years of experience now but this book resonated with me in that way.

If you’re expecting an outright creepy, scary horror book, this is not it. It’s definitely creepy but the horror elements are more underlying which actually makes it more atmospheric and weird in my opinion. There are also a lot of sci fi elements to this regarding the time travel aspect of the book. I read this in one sitting, I was just compelled to turn the pages. I felt so sorry for Hylee, everyone around her seemed to be failing her and I just wanted her to experience some rest and happiness.

I really enjoyed her relationship with Eilam and the way their love literally conquered all. Bubba was such a lovely character as well and prepare to be emotional while reading this because there are both heartwarming and bleak moments. I won’t be the first to say that it’s really hard to find genuinely good YA horror books sometimes, I think YA horror gets a bad rep, but this is going on my favourites list.

Britney S. Lewis is really talented and great at weaving together a compelling and emotionally deep story. I can’t wait to see more from her! This comes out on 8th August so you can pre-order it now or grab it when it hits the shelves!

I had a really good time reading The Dark Place. It was a surprisingly fast read and I honestly didn’t want to put it down. 

Firstly, I have to say just how gorgeous this cover is. It’s definitely what drew me to the book. One of my favourite covers of the year hands down. Stunning. 

The whole premise of The Dark Place was so intriguing. I’ve really gotten into thrillers/horrors in the last year or so. This wasn’t scary, but I did really like the tenser, more horror-esque elements. It’s a great thriller, but I do think it could have upped the ante even more. 

I don’t often include quotes in reviews but I really loved this one: “If a stare was a single story, he was giving me an entire book. I wanted to highlight his paragraphs and fold his corners so I wouldn’t forget my place”. It’s incredibly poetic for a teenager to think this and honestly, I think it’s a beautiful quote. 

The difference in narration style when the story was told from younger Hylee’s perspective was done very well. She really did sound like a child and then in the rest of the book, she actually talked and processed things the way a teenager would. I feel like getting the tone right age-wise can be very difficult.

The ‘time travel’ element of The Dark Place is still a mystery to me. Is it science-based or magic? I don’t know, but I’d be happy either way. It’s such an interesting concept, I think either explanation would be good.

I have no idea if The Dark Place will be a standalone or if the author has plans for a second book, but I hope it does. I feel like there are a lot of unanswered questions and I’d love to learn more about Hylee’s power and why, giving no major spoilers, it’s different to others. 

This would be such a great read for October. It has creepy vibes (in the best way possible) but it’s also quite cosy.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this book by way of a form on the author's site, and she gave me access to a temporary ecopy via NetGalley (thanks!). This didn't influence my review in any way.

When a book promises to "investigate the truth about time, space, and reality" and involves sibling love (especially in the form of one of the siblings trying to save the other), I get super-excited. And I did get what the blurb promised in both respects...though "investigate" might be too strong a word, since we aren't given a scientific reason for the protagonist's ability to time/space/reality-travel, other than a vague "genes thing". (Then again, The Dark Place is more of a soft-sci-fi novel, and the science itself feels a bit like magic, so that's excusable). I would have liked an explanation for the dark alternate reality Hylee visits, too...but I did enjoy spending time in it and getting creeped out by the twisted version of the night her brother Bubba vanished, and I loved to watch her trying to change the past, fucking up and trying again. I also found the horror aspect and the sibling relationship to be satisfying - easily the best part of the story. Conversely, I wasn't so keen on the whole "family secret" thing - and I don't mean the one that started the chain of events culminating in Bubba's disappearance (also...Hylee's folks aren't the only ones keeping secrets for no valid reason here). The "there's a thing that runs in the family but we won't talk about it and will sweep it under the rug instead" angle has been done to death, and frankly, it never feels believable - plus, Hylee's parents' and grandmother's cold-shoulder attitude here is way over the top. Lastly, the ending feels rushed and resolves the family conflict far too easily (not to mention, for the wrong reason).

(One note about the lead's inner monologue: the abundance of verbs without the "I" subject was probably supposed to make the protagonist's "teen voice" sound more natural, but if anything, it got the opposite effect - it felt way too deliberate. Maybe I'm just a grammar purist, but it did nothing for the story IMO, either than irritate this reader...).

Seventeen-year-old Hylee is able to jump backward in time to an event where she witnesses the murder of her cousin. During that time her older brother goes missing. Hylee doesn't remember much more about that day only that it freaked out both her parents and best friend big time. She's sent to live with her grandmother. When she meets Eliam at a party, she has this overwhelming sensation she knows him. After she ends up disappearing in front of him and reappears later, instead of avoiding her? Eliam insists they meet up again. He has his own secret. A secret that might help her make sense of what's going on and maybe help her find her lost brother.

What worked: YA meets Jordan Peele. This novel has a little bit of everything: time travel, romance, and subtle horror elements. It kind of reminded me of a more subtle US only in this case the protagonist's horrific traumatic event and her ability to time travel causes more than a few ripples in her timeline.

The instant connection between Hylee and Eliam is believable and you can't hope that they are able to kindle the chemistry between them. The whole time travel aspect with surreal horror elements paints a creepy, haunting backdrop. Plus, the consequences of using time travel are shown.

Good pacing, and engaging characters that question the whole idea of not only being able to travel to alternative timelines but also to show firsthand the results. I believed Hylee's fears and also her determination to demand from her family to know the truth of what was going on with her.

Finally, I really loved the premise of how a traumatic event in the past can have haunting results for a time traveler. In this case, each time Hylee revisits her childhood home, not only does she revisit the same day but the house takes on more creepy aspects.

Surrealist horror elements entwined with romance and a protagonist who has the ability to time travel. Add a bubbling romance for a captivating tale.

Thanks to Britney S. Lewis and Disney Publishing Worldwide/Disney-Hyperion for the complimentary copy through Netgalley! It doesn’t affect my review in any way and I’m very happy to read another book by this author.

Seventeen-year-old Hylee Williams has always carried the grief of the day her older brother went missing. However, she started disappearing to a place that is a twisted version of our world, full of creeping vines, moss, and complete darkness. And when she meets a boy named Eilam after going to a party with her bestfriend, things take for a turn when she disappears right in front of him. And as her disappearances become more frequent, Hylee soon realizes she’s not alone in the world, and that she holds the key to finding the truth about her brother, and possibly save him.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time meets Stranger Things in The Dark Place, which tells such a remarkable story of grief that involves elements of science fiction and fantasy. It is a wonderful tale that warps of time and reality with a little bit of the classic cliché teen romance. Lewis’s characters are exceptional, and I absolutely love her storytelling. Her writing has improved, and her pacing is perfect, hitting right into a reader’s heart. This YA horror novel does not only tell us a sentimental story of love between siblings, but it navigates a story of regret, truth, and acceptance leading towards a bittersweet and emotional ending. I do believe a few elements were left untouched and felt that they should’ve been explored more, but this stand-alone just hits right in the feels! I would absolutely love to hear more from this author.

P.S. I would really love to time travel just to see my grandmother again like how Eilam does. I don’t know if she’ll recognize me, but I would do it just to hear her voice again and ask her all the things I wasn’t given a chance to. She passed away a year ago and I truly miss her a lot.

For me the book was not like Coraline and if it had not been marketed that way I would have been able to rate it higher as I would've gone in with a different expectation.

I was super excited to be picked to be apart of a book tour and got an ARC of The Dark Place by Britney S. Lewis and it was known right away the copy was not fully finished. It did not have pictures and some of the formating was a bit of a mess but it did not take away from the book at all. I really enjoyed it. Was such an interesting concept. And I felt so bad for Hylee. Her childhood seemed so rough, she was trying to figure out why she is the way she is, not to mention the dreams she had. At least she had Eilam, someone who understood her better than anyone. The amount of Disney references made me laugh but I truly enjoyed it and I am looking forward to seeing the book in its proper way.

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. The Dark Place was an amazing book that kept my attention the entire time, however I would not classify it as a horror. I kept waiting to get scared, which never happened. This doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, as I loved every minute, but I feel like it was advertised incorrectly. I will be certainly be looking for more of Ms. Lewis's books in the future!! A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads.

A creepy atmospheric read about a teen in search of her sibling that is just as heartwarming as it is horrendous. If you're looking for a more teen Coraline this books hits that vibe and the author's style is very transportive.

The Dark Place was an enjoyable book, with its dark atmosphere and sci-fi elements to it. It was enjoyable but I felt like it could've been a bit darker and at times it left me wanting for more.

The Dark Place is not a horror. It is more of a Sci-fi type mystery. The dark place has elements of Dark Matter by Blake Crouch if you have ever read that book.

Hylee is our main character. She is sent to her grandmother's house to live after she suddenly disappears at a family gathering. Hylee is thrown back into a day that changed her life forever and is trying to solve the mystery of a missing family member.

I was expecting horror, so I was ready to be scared. But I just got a sad mystery. We do not spend much time in the dark place. Which, I would have loved. I do get some Coraline vibes here and there. I want also to mention that some of the characters in the story felt like placeholders because we do not get to know much about them. Eilam was my favorite character in the book because he was more of a fleshed-out character. Surprisingly I loved the romance in this book. I found it to be sweet. I also found some inconsistencies in the story, but they may be fixed in the final copy.

I will give The Dark Place 3 stars because I liked the story once I could see where the story was going. I recommend it to people who are looking for a quick read.


Thanks, NetGalley and Disney Publishing Worldwide, Disney Hyperion for providing this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
I will post my review on Youtube and Tik Tok on (8/1/2023) @allthisnerdyness

i had a chance to get my hands on the arc for britney’s sophomore novel and i just want to say thank you for allowing me to review your book! you have such a way with imagery in “the dark place” and “the undead truth of us” that it makes my brain crave more.

i relate to hylee in many ways when it comes to feeling misunderstood, left out and being looked at like you’re crazy. it’s rough to always have those things nagging you at every second of the day. you want to understand what is happening and why; why you’re the one who has to go through it and suffer.

eilam & lee’s relationship was so well written…i have no words. i love eilam’s character so much and how he compliments lee, keeps her feeling sane. it’s such a wonderful dynamic.

journey’s end in lovers meeting.