I am torn on rating this one. I have read Julia Heaberlin before and always enjoyed her books. They are always very atmospheric and you can feel the mystery and dread so strongly to where it's almost claustrophobic. That being said, they are always slow burners. This was no different. There is nothing wrong with that, I just prefer faster paced books. NOW, having said THAT, I ended up LOVING this one! The timeline got a bit confusing, as it ends up jumping ahead 5 years, but I felt so strongly for all of the characters I almost didn't want it to end. I loved Odette and really struggled with Wyatt's innocence or non-innocence. I guess this is the mark of a good author! She makes a writing style that's not really my cup of tea, become my cup of tea! Plus, I'm from Texas, so I really love that aspect!

Thank you to NetGalley, Julia Heaberlin and Ballentine Books for this ARC!

Tender, resilient, strong, resourceful, kind, empathetic.

This is a stunner of a book. A real sense of place, great characters and women who are abused by the men in their lives in so many ways. These women really are heroes. This is a book that will stick with you. Highly recommended.

Okay wow. This book deserves ALL the stars. This is definitely my favorite read of the year so far.

This is so wonderfully well written and captivating that once you've started, you don't want to stop. It has so many twists and turns that it's one of those books that you want to savor but you also want to finish as quickly as possible just so you can figure out what's going on. The mysteries are just so great and so well handled!

The characters are also fantastic. I loved Odette and Angel and I loved following them through this story and getting to know them. And the disability rep is incredible. (I especially loved the acknowledgments at the ending talking about the wonderful women who inspired these characters!!)

I can't even tell you how many amazing passages I highlighted while reading this. There are so many beautifully written, wonderfully quotable passages. This book just really hits home in ways you don't expect. Because we have felt lost and loss and there are so many events and emotions that we all feel universally. I love that this book touched on that.

So. A wonderful thriller with a couple of great mysteries but a lot of deeper content woven into this narrative. This book says a lot of things that need to be said. And so I'm grateful that this book exists. I enjoyed it so much and didn't want it to end. HIGHLY recommend!!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for allowing me to read this. It was a pleasure!

I have been a big fan of Julia Heaberlin since reading Black-eyed Susans years ago, so I was so thrilled to get an advanced copy of her new book. Let me tell you, We Are All the Same in the Dark did not disappoint!

We Are All the Same in the Dark is a story about small towns and family secrets. I love the way Julia blends the past and present together seamlessly. As always, her writing style is flawless and kept me wanting more. A great read for 2020!

We Are All the Same in the Dark is the first book by Julia Heaberlin that I have had the pleasure to read. This book defiantly kept me on edge and turning the pages. There were twists and turns, some of them I did figure out but some I was totally blindsided by.

The story is one that is full of lies, deceit, betrayal and lots and lots of secrets. Most of the characters in this book I disliked in the best way possible and I believe that Ms. Heaberlin’s goal was for the reader to find most of the characters abhorrent, and in my opinion, she achieved this goal.

We Are All the Same in the Dark is well thought out, the writing was solid and flowed well. Ms. Heaberlin sets the scene thoroughly for this domestic thriller, and her character development is utterly devious. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book.

I received a free electronic ARC of this novel from Netgalley, Julia Heaberlin, and Random House Publishing - Ballantine Books. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Julia Heaberlin is a novelist I will follow and am pleased to recommend to friends and family. She writes an intricate mystery, well concealed, and her protagonists are beautifully written and interestingly flawed.

We Are All the Same in the Dark is set in a small town verging into the Hill Country of Central Texas, and peopled with folks we all know and usually understand, or think we do. At the end of this novel, I am having trouble trusting my perception of anyone I know, so Julia Heaberlin does good work. Told from three points of view, this work is compelling and relentless. You have to find the answers before the laundry gets done of supper started. And before it is over, you will, like me, be afraid of entering the Blue House.

pub date Aug 11, 2020

Read this book if you like:
•Twisty thrillers
•Ever-building suspense that has your heart pounding
•Creepily atmospheric small town settings
•Mysterious and unpredictable murder mysteries spanning many years
•Solving unexplained disappearances
•Multiple narrators
•Dynamic characters

This one had me on the edge of my seat! I loved how the lives of the different characters intertwined towards solving the building mysteries throughout the book. In the midst of this ominous and imposing town, Heaberlin created such an interesting cast of characters with unique voices and personalities that made me invested in their story. Definitely a great new thriller to read this summer! Thank you to Ballantine, Random House, & NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

It took me two days to think about We are all the same in the dark before reviewing it. This dark thriller was complex. Told from multiple points of view the reader is slowly taken down a road that the reader has no idea which way the road will turn. It's a fascinating read one that is dark at times but is always keeping you guessing. I loved this great read. I highly recommend it for anyone that liked The Familiar dark, the Last time I lied or The Wife and the Widow. Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for my advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

Mysteries set in small Southern towns specialize in stripping away the idyllic image of sunshine-laden streets filled with scenes of saccharine sweetness, and showing the dark, eerie underbelly of betrayal and murder that lie beneath. We Are All the Same in the Dark is an excellent example of this sub-genre.

One night changed their lives. Odette Tucker was supposed to hang out with Wyatt Branson and his sister Tru (Trumanell) that evening at their home but she got turned away at the door. Convinced they were being held hostage by their abusive father, she leaves the house deeply distressed only to wind up in a devastating car accident. When the sun rises the next day, Odette is missing a leg, Wyatt is missing his memories and Tru and her father are just flat out missing.

Several years and a stint in a mental hospital later, Wyatt is still the number one suspect in the eyes of the townspeople for whatever crime was committed that night. So when he sees a lost girl lying in a field surrounded by a ring of dandelions, he almost keeps driving. Being seen with a female adolescent by anyone in the community will only land him in trouble with the authorities, but his conscience won’t let him leave her lying helpless by the side of the road. He brings her home with him and within hours the police are at his door.

Odette hadn’t planned on being a cop like her late father, grandfather and great-grandfather but somehow she wound up wearing the blue and badge anyway. When the call comes in that someone saw Wyatt drive home with a strange girl, she heads straight to his place. Like her dad, she believes Wyatt is innocent – but she is the only person on the force who does.

When Odette sees the mute, one-eyed mystery girl lying on Wyatt’s couch, she knows Wyatt will be imprisoned or killed by vigilante justice if she doesn’t deal with the situation quickly and quietly. Tru’s disappearance was the subject of a recent documentary and half the country is now convinced Wyatt is a serial killer, a man who has used his job as a trucker to scour the highways for lost young women whom he ensures never make it home. They decide to call the girl Angel since she refuses to tell them her name, and Odette sneaks her over to her cousin Maggie’s place. Maggie runs a sort of unofficial foster home, taking in the human strays that Odette finds wandering through their town. This isn’t the first time a mysterious young lady has landed in her living room – but it will be the last.

This is a slow burn mystery, with a gothic feel. While typically a gothic revolves around a building of some kind, in this case it is the town itself which gives off the creepy, eerie vibe. There is a barely suppressed sense of violence and menace to the denizens of the community, an aura of unrest, and simmering savagery that is prevalent in the people of the area.

Odette is the calm in this storm but her layer of serenity is being slowly eroded by the anger that surrounds her and the strain of keeping Wyatt safe. She’s an interesting mix of strong, damaged and vulnerable. She’s made up for the loss of her leg with physical strength but remains deeply aware that nothing can completely compensate for this weakness in her defenses. She also knows that wasn’t the greatest injury she suffered that night. Her hope for the future, joy in life and trust in humanity were the real casualties. Wyatt is the epicenter for this loss. She has no new evidence for the case and no matter how often she looks at the files, no other possible suspects present themselves. Her father had been first on the scene and had assured Odette the facts acquitted Wyatt, but everyone else remains convinced of his guilt. She feels exhausted and alienated from those around her as she tries to protect this man who is too mentally damaged to protect himself, and finds herself as lost and perplexed in her search for answers to Angel’s problems as she is in searching to discover the truth about the missing Tru.

The story is told primarily from Odette’s point of view but we also see things from the perspectives of Wyatt and Angel. This gives us a more comprehensive view of the events taking place, allowing the reader to be fully immersed in the narrative. And what I mean by immersion is actually confusion. Angel makes a poor narrator initially, since she tends to be more cryptic than enlightening. That situation isn’t alleviated until at least forty percent into the book. Wyatt is unreliable due to mental illness. Odette simply doesn’t know anything, and the mysteries she so desperately wants to solve are complicated simply because the people who hold the secrets that explain everything want to keep them secret. In most mysteries we are fed crumbs we’re meant to follow on our way to the solution, but that doesn’t really happen here. In this case, the crumbs blew away a long time ago and all that remains are an unholy thirst for revenge on the part of the local residents, and Odette’s desire for truth.

Odette’s fatigue and the demoralized perplexity she feels regarding Wyatt and Angel lend the text a lethargic, almost sluggish ambience at the start of the book. It isn’t until we reach the halfway mark that the narrative pacing starts to match that of a typical mystery. Since the book is billed as a thriller, I initially struggled with the languorous nature of the prose. Fortunately, the second half of the story, told from Angel’s point of view, picks up speed and provides the missing sense of immediate menace that the first portion lacks. It turned what had been an almost literary style of mystery into a page turner and provided a very satisfying ending.

Ms. Heaberlin is an excellent wordsmith who captures perfectly the sense of a town on the edge of implosion, a tired justice warrior, and the expertly drawn cast of disturbing but intriguing supporting characters who make We Are All the Same in the Dark an interesting look at the ominous currents that lie below the surface of any human gathering. I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys small town Southern mysteries.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore

An absolute must read. This story has it all. It has the unbreakable heart break of a missing girl. It has the friend now cop determined to find out once and for all what did happen to Tru.. Oh and don't forget the little girl who seems to appear out of thin air. Well done Julia Heaberlin for ripping out my heart and then putting it back together. A Book that will linger long after you finish the last page. Happy reading!

This book will shock you and break your heart at the same time! I loved every minute of this book! I can't wait to read more by this Author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC.
Publication Date: 8/11/2020

🌟🌟🌟🌟 4/5 stars

So this book broke my heart. Multiple times. We Are All the Same in the Dark is a story from 3 POVs: Odette, a small town cop that cannot let go of the disappearance of her first love’s sister, Trumanell. Wyatt, Odette’s ex whose grief over his lost sister has driven him to madness. Angel, a girl Odette and Wyatt saved and formed a connection with. All three narrators are obsessed with finding out what happened Trumanell and their obsession has different effects on all of their lives.

So. This was a tough book to read. It is a slow-burn, gothic mystery that is not afraid to get extremely dark (no pun intended). The writing is very lyrical and took a bit to get used to at the beginning. There were times that I didn’t want to keep reading because there was no break from the sadness, but I needed to know what happened to Trumanell. The characters are very well-written and you quickly become invested in each narrator, though Wyatt’s point of view was intentionally very difficult to understand at times. The mystery at the center drives the plot forward even as there are times where the pacing slows down.

Overall, We Are All the Same in the Dark is an atmospheric, raw, and relentless mystery with a few gut-punches throughout. Is this a good summer read to enjoy by the pool? Nope. This book needs to be read with a bottle of wine and chased with 5 Hallmark movies. Things get BLEAK. Fans of Gillian Flynn and Sarah Pinborough should check out We Are All the Same in the Dark when it releases on 8/11/2020!

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mysteries set in small Southern towns specialize in stripping away the idyllic image of sunshine-laden streets filled with scenes of saccharine sweetness, and showing the dark, eerie underbelly of betrayal and murder that lie beneath. We Are All the Same in the Dark is an excellent example of this sub-genre.

One night changed their lives. Odette Tucker was supposed to hang out with Wyatt Branson and his sister Tru (Trumanell) that evening at their home but she got turned away at the door. Convinced they were being held hostage by their abusive father, she leaves the house deeply distressed only to wind up in a devastating car accident. When the sun rises the next day, Odette is missing a leg, Wyatt is missing his memories and Tru and her father are just flat out missing.

Several years and a stint in a mental hospital later, Wyatt is still the number one suspect in the eyes of the townspeople for whatever crime was committed that night. So when he sees a lost girl lying in a field surrounded by a ring of dandelions, he almost keeps driving. Being seen with a female adolescent by anyone in the community will only land him in trouble with the authorities, but his conscience won’t let him leave her lying helpless by the side of the road. He brings her home with him and within hours the police are at his door.

Odette hadn’t planned on being a cop like her late father, grandfather and great-grandfather but somehow she wound up wearing the blue and badge anyway. When the call comes in that someone saw Wyatt drive home with a strange girl, she heads straight to his place. Like her dad, she believes Wyatt is innocent – but she is the only person on the force who does.

When Odette sees the mute, one-eyed mystery girl lying on Wyatt’s couch, she knows Wyatt will be imprisoned or killed by vigilante justice if she doesn’t deal with the situation quickly and quietly. Tru’s disappearance was the subject of a recent documentary and half the country is now convinced Wyatt is a serial killer, a man who has used his job as a trucker to scour the highways for lost young women whom he ensures never make it home. They decide to call the girl Angel since she refuses to tell them her name, and Odette sneaks her over to her cousin Maggie’s place. Maggie runs a sort of unofficial foster home, taking in the human strays that Odette finds wandering through their town. This isn’t the first time a mysterious young lady has landed in her living room – but it will be the last.

This is a slow burn mystery, with a gothic feel. While typically a gothic revolves around a building of some kind, in this case it is the town itself which gives off the creepy, eerie vibe. There is a barely suppressed sense of violence and menace to the denizens of the community, an aura of unrest, and simmering savagery that is prevalent in the people of the area.

Odette is the calm in this storm but her layer of serenity is being slowly eroded by the anger that surrounds her and the strain of keeping Wyatt safe. She’s an interesting mix of strong, damaged and vulnerable. She’s made up for the loss of her leg with physical strength but remains deeply aware that nothing can completely compensate for this weakness in her defenses. She also knows that wasn’t the greatest injury she suffered that night. Her hope for the future, joy in life and trust in humanity were the real casualties. Wyatt is the epicenter for this loss. She has no new evidence for the case and no matter how often she looks at the files, no other possible suspects present themselves. Her father had been first on the scene and had assured Odette the facts acquitted Wyatt, but everyone else remains convinced of his guilt. She feels exhausted and alienated from those around her as she tries to protect this man who is too mentally damaged to protect himself, and finds herself as lost and perplexed in her search for answers to Angel’s problems as she is in searching to discover the truth about the missing Tru.

The story is told primarily from Odette’s point of view but we also see things from the perspectives of Wyatt and Angel. This gives us a more comprehensive view of the events taking place, allowing the reader to be fully immersed in the narrative. And what I mean by immersion is actually confusion. Angel makes a poor narrator initially, since she tends to be more cryptic than enlightening. That situation isn’t alleviated until at least forty percent into the book. Wyatt is unreliable due to mental illness. Odette simply doesn’t know anything, and the mysteries she so desperately wants to solve are complicated simply because the people who hold the secrets that explain everything want to keep them secret. In most mysteries we are fed crumbs we’re meant to follow on our way to the solution, but that doesn’t really happen here. In this case, the crumbs blew away a long time ago and all that remains are an unholy thirst for revenge on the part of the local residents, and Odette’s desire for truth.

Odette’s fatigue and the demoralized perplexity she feels regarding Wyatt and Angel lend the text a lethargic, almost sluggish ambience at the start of the book. It isn’t until we reach the halfway mark that the narrative pacing starts to match that of a typical mystery. Since the book is billed as a thriller, I initially struggled with the languorous nature of the prose. Fortunately, the second half of the story, told from Angel’s point of view, picks up speed and provides the missing sense of immediate menace that the first portion lacks. It turned what had been an almost literary style of mystery into a page turner and provided a very satisfying ending.

Ms. Heaberlin is an excellent wordsmith who captures perfectly the sense of a town on the edge of implosion, a tired justice warrior, and the expertly drawn cast of disturbing but intriguing supporting characters who make We Are All the Same in the Dark an interesting look at the ominous currents that lie below the surface of any human gathering. I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys small town Southern mysteries.

Happy Pub Day to We Are All the Same in the Dark!!

Oh hey it’s me coming at you with another 5 ⭐️ read! Psychological thrillers can be a dime a dozen but We Are All the Same in the Dark stands out from the crowd. Darkly atmospheric with hypnotic writing this is a book where I found myself slowing down to appreciate the writing and immersive myself in this story.

A mute girl discovered on the side of the road sparks interest in a decades old unsolved disappearance of another girl in rural Texas. Details about what happened are sprinkled like bread crumbs throughout these short chapters leading to a twist that truly shocked me. I think it’s best to go into this one without knowing too many plot details but trust me you’ll wanna chat about it when you finish.

Out today 8/11 request this from your library, order via my bookshop link, but whatever you gotta do to get your hands on this book!

We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin has me eager to check out her other novels. I loved the way she developed a connection between the protagonists based solely on a brief, but life alternating interaction. Heaberlin cultivates empathy for her characters, all the while maintaining an undercurrent of suspense. Details scattered throughout the story intertwine to weave a tapestry of heartache and regret. Suspenseful with just a pinch of creepy, We Are All the Same in the Dark is the perfect dish for your next thriller craving...just ask "Betty" for the recipe!

When the injured dog he saw by the side of the road turned out to be a gravely injured teenaged girl, Wyatt Branson’s senses told him to get back in his truck and drive away. He knew the population of his hometown still believed he had something to do with the disappearance of his abusive father and sister Trumanell, who was beloved by everybody. He tried to keep a low profile. If anyone saw him with a young girl, there’d be hell to pay. Still, when she looked at him, pleading for help, he couldn’t abandon her. She didn’t respond to his questions; he wondered if she could speak at all. Because of the way he found her, arms stretched out like she was making snow angels, sparkly scarf covering one eye, surrounded by beheaded dandelions, he christened her Angel and carried her to safety.
Odette, his high school sweetheart and third generation cop, was the only person he thought he might be able to trust. He turned the girl over to her, and she took her to her cousin Margie, who, with her doctor husband, ran an unofficial safe house for lost souls like Angel. The couple treated her physical wounds, but couldn’t break through the wall shielding her emotional scars.
His impulsive decision awakened the ghosts of the past and impacted the lives of several families: his own; the Tuckers, including Odette, her uncle, a fire-breathing preacher, and his daughter Margie and her family; and Angel, running from a neglectful aunt and a murderous father, looking for shelter from the storm.
The next five years were full of disturbing events and tragedies. Odette, searching for her good friend Trumanell, apparently getting too close to the truth, disappeared without a trace. Angel was swept up into the foster system. Margie and her husband, feeling that they had failed Angel, shut down their safe house. Wyatt seldom left his house except when he was working. He was hounded by fanatics who believed he was responsible for Odette’s disappearance, and by groupies who adored him.
Angel, who’d rechristened herself Angelica Odette, returned to town on the day a memorial statue honoring Trumanell and Odette was unveiled. She had a mission: to find them, or their bodies, and to bring those responsible for their disappearance to justice. She got the attention of people who wanted her to fail. She tried to keep one step ahead of them, but she had to wonder if she’d share the path of her predecessors: search and disappear, search and disappear.
Ms. Haeberlin is at the top of her game in this fast-paced thriller. The plot is wonderfully twisty and convoluted. The characters come alive on the page, each unique and fully fleshed out. The small town atmosphere is captured perfectly. Highly recommended.

At the beginning of We Are All the Same in the Dark, I wasn’t sure I liked it; the language was a little stilted, and it jumped right into the thick of it. That feeling didn’t last long, however. I couldn’t put the book down; it slowly drew you in until I couldn’t stop reading.
You get drips of information that slowly help you put together the puzzle of the town. I was honestly surprised at some of the turns, and even the things I suspected managed to take me off guard somehow.
The atmosphere and characters are what make this book compelling. The small town with a dark past hanging over it, the feeling of danger right around the corner. And all the characters are captivating – and suspicious.
I loved both of the narrators in the book. Odette, a young cop with ties to the town tragedy, and Angel, the young girl Odette is trying to help. I loved both perspectives, and how their connection, though short, had such a lasting impact.
Odette lost one of her legs the night Trumanell disappeared, ten years before the book takes place. Her experiences in the book were eye-opening. Her reality is something I know nothing about, and some of her struggles I would never have considered. The same with Angel and her missing eye. (Just another reason to read books that have characters with different lives and experiences than you – you can be a little closer to understanding).
This book creeps up on you. The characters get under your skin, and you can’t stop reading because you need to know everyone is okay. We Are All the Same in the Dark will unquestionably be a hit with my patrons.

How I feel about this book is hard to explain. I liked it but I felt like something never quite clicked for me. I felt like the book held me at arms' length the entire time. I couldn't really understand the characters, Odette especially. Her relationship with Wyatt was incredibly confusing. At points during the book I felt like I didn't even know where the story was going. I knew where it was supposed to be going, but many times it didn't seem to be moving. That makes for a frustrating read. And, sadly, the ending and "bad guy" seemed way too stereotypical, somewhat of an easy out and let down after surviving all of the character angst.

We Are All the Same in the Dark is what I want in a mystery. Different points of view, story lines from the past and present, and clues that keep you guessing. I have to admit, I did not see the whodunit coming! Each line of thought for me kept me jumping around to different answers to this myster. Haeberlin writes a story infused with emotion and her descriptions of relationships, characters' experiences, and the setting/atmosphere are beautiful.

Be patient with this and all will be revealed. Trumanell and her father disappeared after a night of violence which saw her brother Wyatt damaged and her friend Odette losing a leg. Now, years later, Odette has returned to town and is a police officer. Wyatt, who is still living as more or less a hermit because is considered the villain in their small town, finds a young one eyed mute girl lying on a field of dandelions. Dubbed Angel, she's the one who ties together the past and present. The story is told by Wyatt, Odette, and Angel in sequential order, with Angel's section starting five years in the future. She's the key to a lot but no spoilers from me. Heaberlin knows how to write a thriller- she keeps the tension on and the pacing is great. I rooted for all three of these characters (but was, I have to admit, especially engaged with Odette, who wants to solve her friend's disappearance, cares for Wyatt, and makes a difference in Angel's life.). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good page turning read.