#DarkCorners #MeganGoldin #AndreSantana #JanuaryLaVoy #SamanthaDesz #StMartinsPress #MacmillanAudio #NetGalley

This is an Advanced Listening Copy of the audiobook from Net Galley.

True crime podcaster meets dangerous influencer culture.

Rachel Krall returns when influencer Maddison Logan disappears after visiting suspected serial killer Terence Bailey in prison. The FBI brings Rachel in to help find Maddison, but the investigation reveals that the missing woman barely exists beyond her social media presence. Goldin creates an intriguing premise that explores how people can craft entire identities online while remaining complete mysteries in real life.

André Santana, January LaVoy, and Samantha Desz share narration duties in this Macmillan Audio production, with the multicast approach working well for the different perspectives. Each narrator brings distinct energy to their sections, and LaVoy continues to excel as Rachel's voice from the previous book. The production quality maintains the tension as the investigation moves from prison visits to the glossy world of influencer conferences.

I found myself pulled into the BuzzCon setting where Rachel goes undercover to investigate Maddison's connections. Goldin captures the competitive and often toxic nature of influencer culture while building genuine suspense around Bailey's possible accomplice. The snake tattoo connection creates an effective through-line that ties the past murders to current events.

What works here is how Goldin balances the true crime podcast elements with social media commentary. Rachel's investigation feels methodical and realistic, while the influencer world provides a fresh backdrop for the thriller elements. The danger escalates naturally as Rachel realizes she might be a target herself.

Good follow-up that expands Rachel's world while exploring how online personas can mask deadly intentions.

This is the Mystery Suspense, and this is the second book in the Rachel Krall series. I have read the first book in this series before picking up this book, but I think you could read this book as a standalone. If you do read this book as a standalone you will miss the backstory of the main character in this series Rachel. The mystery in this book had me pulled into. I really loved getting to know Rachel better. I also loved how this book shows how influencer are fake. I listening to the audiobook of this book, and I really liked the narrator. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

I was optimistic about this book, given that it was a sequel to "Night Swim", but the investigation and podcast trope did not captivate me.

Thank you to the publisher for letting me listen to this. The narration was engaging and I could not stop listening. I really loved it and hope others love it as well. The story was engaging as well as the characters. I would recommend.

Dark Corners is a gripping, fast-paced thriller that had me hooked from the opening scene. It’s perfect for fans of true crime podcasts and twisty mysteries.

The narration is outstanding — the cast of narrators makes the story feel like a real podcast experience. The production quality is excellent, with realistic sound elements that deepen the immersion without being distracting.

Megan Goldin masterfully weaves together suspense and social commentary through the lens of influencer culture and justice. Rachel Krall is a compelling protagonist, and the dual timelines kept me guessing until the very end.

This audiobook felt cinematic. I’ll definitely be checking out more from both the author and narrator team.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* This is a great series so far, would love to reread and read more from this author tho!

I thought this story was really well written and was great for a sequel to the night swim. Normally for thrillers I’m not a big fan of sequels but thought this was executed well and the storyline progressed in a believable but also twisting and surprising manner. I also liked the voice of the narrator.

Dark Corners by Megan Goldin is a fast-paced and gripping thriller that expertly blends psychological tension with a modern-day true crime twist. The story follows Rachel Krall, a podcaster known for her investigative skills, as she becomes embroiled in a chilling case involving a missing influencer and a suspected serial killer. Goldin’s sharp writing keeps the narrative taut, alternating between Rachel’s investigation and eerie glimpses into the killer’s mind. The exploration of social media’s darker side adds a timely and unsettling layer to the story, making the stakes feel both immediate and real. With its intricate plotting, compelling characters, and a relentless sense of danger, Dark Corners is a page-turner that delivers both suspense and substance, leaving readers eager for more.

I really enjoyed this book! I love that we had a true crime podcaster because I listen to true crime podcasts. The narrators were great and I was invested in the story the whole time. Thank you netgalley for the ALC!

5 Stars (I received an arc of the audiobook from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review).

I started listening to the audiobook a while ago and then randomly restarted reading it this year. And I ended up finishing the audiobook in two days at only 1.25 speed. I love the first Rachel Krall book "Night Swim" with a couple different of different but amazing narrators. We get to see Rachel Krall interact FBI agents, prisoners and influencers intercut with Rachel Krall Special Report podcast segments. Severely underestimated by the FBI agents she meets briefly to help with help and then is quickly sent away after becoming invested in the case. She stays in the city doing her own investigating and is able to find information that FBI has been trying to obtain. We do get a little more of Rachel's personal life in this story and her needing to pose as a reluctant influencer (exposing how influencers are far from what they appear to be). Always excited to read another Megan Goldin book, which usually has some predictable reveals but usually still leaves me flabbergasted at the end.

The Night Swim by Megan Goldin was one my first forays into the podcast trope and I loved it so naturally I was stoked to see the MC Rachel Krall return for book 2 in the series. The FBI brings Rachel in to help locate a missing influencer, Madison Logan. They soon uncover the seedy side of the influencer world. Overall it was a good thriller beach read for the summer and I'd pick up a book 3 in the series if there is one.

3.5 stars rounded up for goodreads.

Special thanks to @macmillanaudio for the ALC of Dark Corners. All opinions are my own.

Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison even though he is suspected of murdering six women. Maddison Logan, a popular young influencer, visits him in prison, yet hours later she seemingly disappears without a trace. Investigators are left not only wondering what happened to Maddison, and why she even visited Terence in the first place. When the investigation hits a dead end Rachel Krall is asked by the FBI to help out by going undercover at BuzzCon, an influencer convention, to see what she can learn about Maddison, a girl lacking in friends and family. At BuzzCon Rachel learns just how cutthroat the influencer community can be as they strive for numbers and popularity, and these influencers will do almost anything to obtain that social media fame. It is a race against the clock to find out what happened to Maddison before Terence is released, and when a body is found with a distinctive tattoo of a snake eating its tail, also known as a ouroboros, the police begin to worry that Terrance has an accomplice on the outside, especially when they come across a number of urobori throughout the investigation. Can the truth be uncovered and Maddison be found before Terence is released?

Dark Corners is a fast-paced thriller with a few twists and turns. While this novel is the followup to Night Swim, I never found myself lost or confused due to not reading the previous novel, although after reading Dark Corners I might have to pick up Night Swim.There are a number of interesting characters that made the novel rather entertaining, and I think that the way in which the influencer community was portrayed was very realistic and honest. While there are some twists and turns in the novel, there are also a lot of parts that were rather predictable but that did not take away from my enjoyment of the narrative.

The audiobook was simply ok and did not do the novel justice. At times I felt like the narration was too monotone and flat, although I did like that there were different narrators for some of the different characters. I think if I only had the audio for Dark Corners I would have liked the novel less than I did having a copy in my hands; I read more of the novel than I listened to.

I am enjoying this series, and this sequel to the night swim was compelling, suspenseful and an easy read. I enjoyed listening to the advanced audio copy of the novel.

Rachel Krall, a true crime podcaster and investigative reporter, is back. She's been enlisted by the FBI to help with an investigation into a suspected serial killer who may be behind the disappearance of a social media influencer. As Rachel goes undercover at an influencer conference, she learns of the twisted world of content creation and bodies keep turning up. Can Rachel figure out who is behind the deaths of the young women six years ago, and how they are connected to the current crimes?

This intricately plotted thriller worked well on audio with Rachel Krall's podcast episodes scripted to include additional voices and effects to set them apart from the main narrative.

Megan Goldin has a good thing going with these Rachel Krall books. In fact, I think she’s created a series that is remarkably recommendable. I’ve already made one recommendation, and it hasn’t even been a whole week since I started reading The Night Swim. Now that I’m two books in, I can see this being a very easy “series” for me to continue recommending and one that I'll want to pick up in the future.

Here’s what you can be sure you’ll get in a Rachel Krall book (by Megan Goldin… I realize calling these books by their series name makes it seem like the books are by the fictional character rather than by Goldin herself.) There will be a very intriguing mystery that Krall will investigate. The story will be summed up in a well-produced podcast season whose episodes will be interspersed throughout the book. These books are therefore perfectly consumed as audiobooks. In my opinion, it feels like audio is the way it is intended to be read. Finally, each book (at least up until this point) is essentially a standalone book. There was nothing one needed to know from The Night Swim to become fully immersed in Dark Corners. Personally, this means I will not feel overwhelmed when a new book comes out, knowing that Goldin is not going to require me to remember what happened in these previous two books. That’s a relief. Finally, the story you’ll get is good. The plot, the mystery, the characters, and the way it is all told make these books a safe and exciting book choice.

I'm going to get really picky and critical in the rest of the review. I often review the writing, the characters, the setting, and the theme, and I don't often get into the plot (because that's what you need to discover on your own.) But, while I can get critical about the things I normally review, the plot is incredible. This is a book that I REALLY enjoyed reading. I read it so fast, I didn't want to put it down, and I thought it was a great reading experience. So, keep all of that in mind. Because what really matters is how good the story is, and this is a really good story.

Set in Daytona Beach, this book didn’t have the same foreboding dark atmosphere that I experienced from The Night Swim. The book jumped through many settings: a resort/hotel, a backwoods camping situation, a prison, etc. There wasn’t really one tone that felt common between each setting, which isn’t necessary but meant that the atmosphere didn’t feel as strong as it did in the previous book in this series.

While it hasn’t even been a week since I finished The Night Swim, I cannot quite remember how the perspectives were written, but it felt different in this book. Dark Corners seemed to have a more omniscient narration, jumping away from Rachel’s point of view and giving us at least one other main perspective, but I believe others as well. From what I remember, I feel like The Night Swim contained the narration from Rachel’s perspective, giving us Hannah’s point of view through letters that Rachel read. Regardless, this felt like a big change to me when jumping from one book to the next. I wonder what Goldin could have accomplished had she sought creative ways to keep the narration to a single source. This isn’t really a big complaint at all, but it felt a bit jarring to me.

Otherwise, I have no real complaint about the writing. Except that, I wondered about the logic of Rachel’s experience at BuzzCon. While not explicitly stated, it felt like Rachel would have been older than many of the other influencers there. She would have well-earned respect with her name, Rachel Krall, but I wasn’t sure I believed that some of the participants would have opened up to her as much as they did with her alias, especially if they didn’t see her as an equal in age or status.

Rachel and Agent Martinez are the main characters in this story. The plot also revolves around Terrance Bailey who I liked a lot as a character. He and Madison were clearly written with some level of depth. The other characters we met were given very little depth. Their characterization was heavily influenced by their careers as influencers. In fact, it felt like the “influencers” were written as caricatures. If Goldin had given a little more care to be nuanced with these characters, her writing and her themes would have been stronger.

This book felt like it was loosely based on the Gabby Petito case, but I could be wrong, as there weren’t a lot of overlaps. It was however similar in that a young, beautiful, white influencer went missing and law enforcement paid attention. This seemed to be one of the main themes of the book: that some people go missing without law enforcement caring, and some (those who seem like the “right type of person”) receive a lot of attention from law enforcement. In fact, Goldin even writes an unambiguous statement to this effect in her book. It was like she was saying “LOOK! HERE’S THE POINT! YOU CAN’T MISS IT!” However, unlike the Gabby Petito case, it seems like only law enforcement has noticed Maddy's disappearance. Neither the public nor her peers seem to notice. Meanwhile, law enforcement only seems to notice because she connected herself with a dangerous criminal right before she disappeared. This completely undermines Goldin’s perspective. Her voice would have been stronger had she compared and contrasted the public’s interest in different kinds of missing person cases. Considering Goldin wrote a book focused on influencers, there was no real effort at all to show the effect of parasocial relationships.

From listening to Megan Goldin in interviews for this book, it seems like examining influencer culture was a big part of her purpose here. As a previous influencer myself, there was a lot I resonated with, in particular the exhaustion that comes with constantly hustling, and the need to always be thinking about the persona you curate for the world to see. However, Goldin didn’t take it further. Every influencer with the exception of one, was seen as nothing more than vapid, jealous, single-minded, and selfish. If an author wants to have a conversation about something, I think it’s important to explore the topic with a little more depth and care.

I have to get very picky to critique this book, and while I did seem to critique many parts of it, that’s simply because I want to engage with books in this way. I want to examine the writing, the themes, and the purpose of the book. That said, the plot and the intrigue were so good. I was even more caught up in this book than The Night Swim, and while I was able to piece some plot points together, I was still left guessing. I turned on this audiobook and didn’t want it to stop. This is a story to fall into and to ride through, and I really really liked it.

Sincere thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an Advanced Readers Audio Copy of this book. I cannot tell you how excited I was to be approved for this. I was so looking forward to it! And it did not disappoint!

Excellent audiobook. I thoroughly enjoyed the reader of this book and the plot moved along at an excellent pace.

Really intriguing premise, well executed plot. Maybe ran a little too long, but I really enjoyed the story and the characters.

This was a fun thriller. I enjoyed the podcast aspect, and this made for a great audiobook. The pacing was a little slow at times, but I found the plot easy to follow and a quick read.

Unfortunately I will not be rating or reviewing St. Martin’s Press books. I am participating in the boycott so unless SMP would like to address the book community, I will not associating with this publisher.

A traditional thriller with twists and turn and I love that it follows the same podcast host as in Goldin's book Night Swim. Rachel is incredibly brave or loves an adrenaline rush because some of the situations she finds herself in. Unfortunately Rachel will discover that the sociopaths of society hide in plain sight and then there's even more danger in the dark corners of every life.