Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for this advanced reader copy, all opinions are my own.

I thought I knew where this book was going--I didn't. I absolutely love a book that can surprise me, as I read on average 100 books a year, most of which are thrillers. The atmospheric setting of this book--a small English village, surrounded by thick dark woods--fit right in with the time of year it took place--Halloween and into early November. The characters weren't what I expected either, and I can't say enough how pleased I was to be surprised. The writing was excellent and made me not want to put the book down. I also want to run out and get every other book this author has written. Highly recommend.

4.5 stars

In a quiet hamlet in a small area tucked away in the British countryside, a group of teens meet up on Hallowe'en to party and just be teenagers. The party is in Sally in the Wood, a strangely named part of the road and forest near the local college, where rumours fly about a murdered girl many years ago. Unfortunately, a young girl is found dead at the nearby folly early the next morning. The local guidance counsellor is trying to help the student body through this terrible ordeal whilst simultaneously trying to deal with an uncharacteristically moody teen daughter and an ex-husband who also happens to be the detective on this particular case. Is the girl's death tied to the murder that happened years earlier? Will they be able to solve who killed her and why?

I thought this was a great thriller of a read. It started off pretty quickly but there was a bit of background exposition/setup that had to happen throughout to get to the real meat of the story. I'm sorry to say that I was caught by all the red herrings the author threw my way. By the end, I'm pretty sure I gasped out loud once everything was clear. If you're a fan of dark, twisty thrillers, then you'll probably really enjoy this one!

Thanks to NetGalley, author Hannah Richell, and Atria Books for granting me access to a free digital ARC of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own and are provided here voluntarily.

Thank you to netgalley for this ARC.

This book has multiple POVs and while I normally don't like that type of structure. It worked perfectly for this book. This has so many fun spooky elements-- a boarding school, creepy stories, murder, the woods, such a great read for the Fall. I really loved the setting and creepy vibe.

Thank you Atria Books for allowing me to read and review One Dark Night on NetGalley.

Published: 08/19/25

Stars: 3

An okay read. There are too many intersecting characters, some more developed than others causing my mind to wonder off the story. I could have done without the pregnancy storyline, it felt like filler.

Overall, satisfying and enjoyable.

What really happened that Halloween night in the woods? A spooky legend says the ghost of a murdered bride still haunts the forest - and for one student, the dare to enter turns deadly.

When a Halloween party ends in tragedy, Detective Ben Case is called in to investigate, only to learn his own daughter was at the party. His ex-wife, Rachel, the school guidance counselor, is desperate to protect their daughter and her students as suspicion and fear spread. Secrets surface, old wounds reopen, and the hunt for a killer begins.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere of this book - dark, tense, and eerie. Just when I thought I had the culprit figured out, the author completely blindsided me with the shocking reveal! The multiple POVs, vivid setting, and diverse cast of characters made the story come alive. I especially enjoyed the strong character development, clever plotting, and twisty suspense that kept me hooked from start to finish.

This was a compelling, creepy, and unforgettable read. Perfect for fall, perfect for Halloween, and perfect for readers who love chilling mysteries with heart. Don’t read it with the lights out!

Rachel is a guidance counselor at a very exclusive boarding school, where her daughter Ellie is a scholarship student. In the nearby woods, on Halloween weekend, the students have a forbidden party, and one student ends up dead. Ben, the detective called to the scene, is the ex-husband of Rachel and Elie's father. This begins a complicated intertwining of the these three individuals, the faculty, other students, and the legend of a vengeful spirit rumored to prey on people in the area.

The storyline was compelling enough to keep me reading, and the characters were also interesting. But it was a bit too complicated for me, with too many coincidences. I wish there had been more from a few of the characters. Even so, I would recommend this book overall.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This eerie atmospheric thriller had me on the edge of my seat wondering what on earth was going on. It’s chilling from the get go when a young girl is found dead on the woods near a private school campus. The girl experienced a traumatic fall, but it’s how her body was positioned and drawn on that makes detectives believe this wasn’t an accident. Loved every minute of this! Couldn’t get enough. Thank you @atriabooks for sending me this ARC!

3.5 stars

A student at a private British high school is found murdered in the woods the day after Halloween. Ellie, her classmate, knows more than she lets on. Her mother Rachel, is the school counselor and already dealing with an unhappy Ellie due to her divorce from detective Ben. There are multiple suspects in this dark novel.

I was surprised by the ending. I was set on another suspect! Overall I enjoyed this book but it did get a bit slow in the middle.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley For a copy of this book.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Hannah Richell for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for One Dark Night coming out August 19, 2025. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author. I really love horror books. I love spooky Halloween stories. I wasn’t as into this book as I thought I would be. The characters really didn’t do it for me. But I would check out other books by this author.

Decent pacing and interesting plot, but the piece that I got hung up on was the ghosts. Do late teens believe in them? I’m skeptical.

Now a mystery where a student dies under sketchy circumstances is completely my jam. The Halloween/dress up piece was an interesting twist and I enjoyed that. However, as someone that works with teens, I kept thinking that they aren’t that dumb!

Thanks to NetGalley for the read.

We start off on Halloween with a bunch of kids from an elite private school having a party in the woods. There is a legendary ghost story about Sally in the woods and some of the girls are dressed in costume like her. By the end of the night one of them is dead at the bottom of a cliff. I was pulled in right away and then it fell flat for a while. It is a slow burn, police procedural story. There is a lot of interviewing of the school kids and trying to verify everyone's whereabouts and get their alibis and flush out any secrets. There were times where I was just kind of bored with it. However, it did pick up in the second half of the book and kept my interest. It is a good plot and there is an unexpected twist at the end. Overall, it was a pretty good read, but definitely more mystery than thriller.

Thank you NetGalley & Atria books for an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. #NetGalley #OneDarkNight

One Dark Night is deliciously twisty and impossible to put down. With its eerie atmosphere, layered family drama, and convincing dark academia setting, it delivers on every promise—and then some. A haunting, scandal-filled read that lingers long after the last page.

One Dark Night starts with a promising premise, but I struggled to stay engaged. While the twists were executed with skill, most of them felt predictable. What really pulled me out of the story was the characters’ constant internal questioning—the endless stream of rhetorical thoughts slowed the pacing and distracted from the action. Instead of building suspense, it made me skim through large sections and feel less invested in the outcome. Overall, this novel had strong potential, but for me, the execution didn’t quite deliver on the initial intrigue.

A good thriller where a Halloween party ends in tragedy. Kids are keeping secrets, the police are desperate to find the culprit, and each character is almost as unbearable as the last one. The characters are fleshed out well and the relationships are thought out that this feels like a well-rounded thriller and not something just thrown together for a scare. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for something to drag them in.

A far cry from my usual thriller, this is a sort of police procedural, but focused on students in a high school setting who went to a Halloween party in the woods one night, and the next day a body was discovered. I do not trust anyone and the plants of doubt are very subtle, so the twist at the end wasn’t fully expected. Unfortunately though, I was not at all invested. I didn’t care about any of the characters, because the writers prose felt emotionless. I wish I could give this more praise, but it was easily forgetful and I am no better for having read it.

Hannah Richell is a new author for me, but a friend recommended this book so I picked it up and read the description. I sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try.

Description:
On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.

Rachel, the school guidance counselor, is trying to keep a handle on her increasingly distant teenaged daughter, Ellie, while students and parents panic and mourn. Her ex-husband and detective Ben, dealing with a personal crisis of his own, has concerns about his daughter’s safety as he investigates the death. Meanwhile, Ellie is keeping secrets from both her parents, including one about where she was that night.

Told from multiple perspectives and with Hannah Richell’s distinct “atmospheric and ever-twisting” (Emylia Hall, author of the Shell House Detective Mysteries) prose, One Dark Night is a white-knuckled and suspenseful thriller about urban legends, privilege, and how the past continues to haunt us.

My Thoughts:
The book is fast-paced and full of tension. Lots of twists and turns to the story with multiple leads and possible scenarios. The story was told from multiple perspectives which I thought added a lot to the story by providing different points of view and different goals. This was well written and deftly plotted. The book would make an excellent Halloween read! I would highly recommend this book to mystery and thriller lovers.

Thanks to Atria Books through Netgalley for an advance copy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+

One Dark Night is the kind of book that pulls you in with a creepy setup and keeps you flipping pages way past bedtime. Haunted woods? Local legends? Teenagers sneaking out on Halloween? Yes, please. Hannah Richell takes all of that and wraps it into a twisty, atmospheric thriller that’s both spooky and surprisingly heartfelt. Plus who doesn’t love a good family drama with a splash of horror?!

What pulled me in and kept my attention is how the story balances multi-layered mystery with family drama. Rachel is just trying to hold it together as a mom, her daughter Ellie is keeping secrets (like any teenager), and then there’s Ben, the ex-husband/dad/detective who’s got plenty of baggage himself. Their tangled relationships make the suspense feel even juicier, because every reveal hits on an emotional level too.

The pacing kept me guessing and was written in a way that each POV was engaging but not difficult or confusing to keep up with which I always appreciate! The eerie vibe of Sally in the Wood gave me just the right amount of chills without tipping into horror. The imagery provided through Richell’s descriptions allowed me to almost watch the book in my head because I could so clearly envision each scene, which adds an element of reading that’s especially enjoyable.

If you like thrillers that are twisty but also give you characters you care about, One Dark Night is a must read. Bonus: it’s perfect to devour around Halloween. 🎃

// 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 //

Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Pub Date: 8.19.25
Genre: 𝘔𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘺/𝘚𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝑬𝒙𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒕
👮🏻 Police Perspective
🏘️ Urban Legends
🤫 Secrets/Lies
❓ Multiple Suspects
🎓 Private School
🔎 Murder Mystery
🗣️ Multiple POV

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕
On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one students will be dead.

𝑺𝒏𝒂𝒑𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒕 𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔
• This book is coming out just in time for fall! Post-Halloween murder, eerie woods, paranormal small town urban legends and many layers of secrets all add up to make this a great fall season read.

• I questioned so many characters throughout the book…some seemed too obvious, but there was a lot of suspicions characters/motives that had me guessing until the end!

• The storyline with Ben and Chrissie served a purpose/point…but I think we kept coming back to it more than necessary for the story.

• Ellie’s character though so frustrating at times - I liked her. I think the author really captured the essence of a teenage struggling with the world around her. Though old enough to know better…I think we often forget as a society that teenagers are still children and they do things that are frustrating and not always smart!

• I enjoyed this one much more than the previous book I read by this same author (The Search Party).

𝗤𝗢𝗧𝗗: Does your town have any ghost legends/stories?

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 @𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸!

#onedarknight #newrelease #thrillerbooks #spookyseason #fallreadinglist #bookstagram #atriapartner

One of the better thrillers I’ve read! This book drew me in immediately and kept me guessing until the very end.

I enjoyed the multiple points of view! The author did a great job of writing from each character’s perspective, while never focusing on any singular character too long. Every time I thought I knew what was happening, there was a new twist that lead me in a new direction.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick pace thriller!

A huge thank you to Atria books and the author for a copy of this book.

I’ll be honest, One Dark Night started off a bit like wading through molasses. I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the end. But stick with it, because once it hits its stride, you’re hooked. Around the one-third mark, the pace picks up, the suspense tightens, and I was racing through the rest with my heart in my throat.

As a counsellor, I particularly appreciated Rachel's character, a school counsellor navigating grief with youth. It added a layer of realism and empathy to the story that felt grounded in actual human experience, not just plot twists and red herrings.

Speaking of red herrings, this book delivers them in spades. Just when you think you’ve got the mystery solved, Richell sneaks in another twist. The ending truly keeps you guessing until the very last page, which I loved.

If you’ve read The Search Party, you’ll recognize a similar whodunit vibe: lots of suspects, lots of misdirection, and enough suspense to keep you up at night.

Bottom line: stick with it. The slow start is worth it for the thrilling payoff, the clever twists, and the moments that genuinely make you question who, if anyone, can be trusted.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #AtriaBooks for the ARC.