The Familiar Dark by Amy Engel @aengelwrites @DuttonBooks

The Familiar Dark by Amy Engel is now available. We read it in our Traveling Sister reading group and we all loved it and highly recommend it!

Brenda’s review

Hot Diggity Dang! This is one exciting emotionally taut page-turner not to be missed.

Amy Engel takes us to the poorest part of the Missouri Ozarks and creates a dark, harrowing, harsh and gritty atmospheric setting. We are pulled from the seedy underbelly of town to the quiet woods and the most dangerous place for our main character Eve her mother’s trailer.

Eve determined to raise her daughter differently than she was and keep the evil that surrounds her mother and her hard ways from her daughter is now forced to go back to her roots in her quest for vengeance after her daughter is murder.

Amy Engel brilliantly delves into the darkness inside our characters while exploring grief, loss, family bonds and roots, loyalty and survival. The characters are strong, interesting and exciting and their relationships are unquie and powerful.

It’s all about the characters here and the mystery here adds to the dynamics between the characters. There are some heartstopping twists to the story and that final reveal is one dark emotional twist.

Norma’s review

Darkly disturbing, gritty, & gripping stuff here with a Holy Shooty Balls ending!

THE FAMILIAR DARK by AMY ENGEL is a suspenseful, raw, absorbing, and a highly compulsive read here that was quite the emotional and intense psychological thriller. The novel starts off with quite the gut-wrenching and emotional scene that immediately hooks the reader and has you frantically flipping those pages right to the very end to uncover the truth. It was such a brisk-paced read and absolutely un-put-down-able because just like Eve I needed to find out who the despicable killer was.

AMY ENGEL delivers quite the atmospheric, palpable, entertaining, compelling, and unsettling read here that is high on intrigue and suspense that had me totally invested in this story. Eve’s voice here (our main character) is extremely well portrayed and got right under my skin. Her grief and search for retribution was extremely raw and felt so real. It was definitely a little hard to read at times because ENGEL pulls no punches here when it comes to Eve and her grief. This book definitely got my adrenaline pumping and had me feeling pretty queasy a lot of the time.

AMY ENGEL excels at connecting you to her characters and has you totally believing in them which allowed me to be totally gobsmacked in the end giving this my Holy Shooty Balls stamp of approval for a wowzers ending! I was totally shocked and stunned!!

Lindsay’s review

Gritty. Emotional. Gripping. Addictive.

The novel starts with emotional intensity when Eve Taggart discovers her twelve-year-old daughter has been murdered at the local playground. Eve and her bother Cal, who is a local police officer, go on a hunt to track down the killer while uncovering small town secrets and scandal.

I loved Eve! I connected with her from the first chapter when she reacts to the discovery of her daughters death. My heart broke for her and I became extremely invested in her finding answers. Eve was a strong woman with a long hidden wild side. Eve’s childhood was enveloped within the backwoods, off-the-grid, redneck trailer park nestled in the deep, poorest parts of the Missouri Ozark mountains. She grew up with an abusive mother, having to fend for herself. After having her daughter at seventeen-years-old, Eve changes her way of life, escaping the filth and desperation of her childhood. Although she barely makes enough to get by, with help from Cal, she created a cleaner, healthier life for her and her daughter. However, those long hidden, backroads, fend-for-yourself ways reignite in Eve to help her find answers to her daughters brutal murder.

Each and every character was done to perfection, adding a new layer of intrigue and suspense to the story. My suspicions crawled all over this small town setting. The novel was highly atmospheric and drew me right in – especially the backroads, gritty trailer park scenes which had me feeling chills creep up my spine.

The mystery within these pages is pulse-pounding and stomach-churning. The writing was brilliant and kept me hanging on every word. I adored the author’s previous novel, The Roanoke Girls, and am excited to say this was just as exceptional.

We received copies from Edelweiss