I received an ARC of A Dark and Secret Place in exchange for an honest review. I felt this book would be a psychological thriller/mystery genre that I usually enjoy. When Heather's mother commits suicide, Heather discovers that she had years of letters that she had exchanged with a convicted murderer serving time in prison. Known as The Wolf, Michael Reeves was accused of the murders of numerous young women. Heather wants to figure out what their relationship was. Rather than a thriller, I would classify this more as a horror story. While there was the mystery of the relationship between her mother and Michael, more murders start taking place using the same MO that Michael, The Wolf, had used. Many parts of the story I had figured out before it was revealed, and I typically don't do that. This was not a book that I couldn't wait to get back to but rather just wanted to get it finished.

Heather didn't expect to go home but she also didn't expect her mother to commit suicide. She discovers, while cleaning out her mother's things, that she maintained a correspondence with Michael Reave, a serial killer known as the Red Wolf. He's been in prison for 20 years but now women are being murdered and their bodies staged just as his victims were. While Heather wants to know more about her mother, DI Ben Parker wants to know who is doing the killing now so he arranges for her to interview Reave. Reave knew her mother in a commune of sorts and he plays a bit with Heather's mind. As does someone who's doing creepy things at home. This is an interesting twist on the serial killer genre. The storytelling is good, especially as Williams ramps up the tension. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

Unsettling, creepy, psychological thriller. I had to stop in a few places and walk away. Dark Grimm Fairy Tales lay the ground work. First time author for me. Even with a format I don't care for I was compelled to finish the book, It tied my stomach in knots as I followed Heather through the pages, It left me tossing and turning long after I finished. I would recommend with caveats as there is animal abuse that was a too descriptive for my taste, Interestingly enough the murders of red wolf (for the most part) were not as descriptive. I am not a fan of the Before and Present in a book, I don't like being pulled from one point of time and into another (needless to say I don't read books with time jumps, ha) I am really a tad befuddled in the best way to describe and share this book so I will settle for - disturbing. Thank you for the arc, I freely volunteer my unsolicited thoughts and opinions..

IMAGINE FINDING OVER TWO DECADES WORTH OF PRISON LETTERS ADDRESSED TO YOUR MOM BY TED BUNDY...Yeah, that would be a troublesome pen pal, right? 😰

Well, that’s a similar situation to what happens to Heather in A Dark and Secret Place. Her mother suddenly commits suicide, leaves a very vague and cryptic note behind, and then Heather discovers 25 years worth of letters her mom stashed away from a notorious serial killer, the “Red Wolf” who is serving time in prison for the disturbing murders he’s committed.

Then, more women begin to turn up murdered in a similar way that the Red Wolf killed and staged his victims. (dismembered with a strange affinity for hearts & flowers 🌸👀...like wtf)

The spider web of mystery continues to spin and spin with this novel and I was caught up in it until the very end. This story is chilling, mysterious, and everything I want in a thriller.

I had so many questions I needed answered and this book does not give up it’s secrets all at once. Instead, it holds the reader’s hand and leads you into the darkest depths.

The end result is twisty and if you’re a horror/thriller fan, then you’ll definitely want to get this book when it’s published on June 8th!

Wow, what an excellent read! A very unsettling atmosphere was present throughout this book. I had a visceral reaction to reading about the gruesome murders. I loved how the author effortlessly weaved together past and present. It was nice to see such a strong female main character. The ending was both surprising and satisfying.

This thriller follows Heather as she returns home after her mother took her own life. Going through her mother's things, she finds letters between her mother and a man - Michael Reave also known as the serial killer Red Wolf. Despite being locked in prison, women have started being murdered in the same way as the Red Wolf killings decades prior. The letters she found may help open some doors and the local police agree to let Heather talk to Michael to see if she can get him to open up at all. Heather may not be ready to hear some hard truths about her mother, Red Wolf, and their connection but as more women are killed, the pressure is on to find something that can help put a stop to the murders.

CW/TW: suicide, animal death, physical abuse, sexual abuse, serial murders

I think this book takes a really interesting angle on the typical serial killer story. I think most serial killer thrillers follow either a police detective or a journalist. And while Heather technically was a journalist, she was fired from her job so is really acting as a civilian in this story. Her journalism background only really comes up when she's trying to think of how to phrase her questions. She does eventually start her own investigation, but since the case is so personal it doesn't feel like a journalist investigation, it really feels like a daughter trying to find out more about her mother. The split POV/timeline between Heather in present day and Michael in the past was also interesting. We get snippets of Michael growing up and these chapters help the reader see him as a person (at least a little) and not just a serial killer. Now, we (or the other characters in the book) are in no way sympathetic toward Michael but when we're able to see the circumstances and situations that came together to create him it does add more humanity into his character. This story has a really obvious parallel to The Silence of the Lambs where our main character meets with a serial killer who often seems to go off on tangents but is actually giving relevant information about the current string of murders. However, in this story, since we have that additional view of Michael we get an extra layer of characterization and empathy.

This story does not shy away from the more horror aspects and I can see that really turning off some readers. I really liked how far the book went and I think it really helped build the overall atmosphere of the story. We get, in multiple chapters, women being stalked and abducted and we know they end up being killed (although the murder doesn't happen on page). I thought it was a really interesting choice to be in the POV of the women and not the killer in these chapters but it worked incredibly well. There's an underlying question throughout the book on if this new string of murders is a copy cat, an accomplice from the original killings, or if they arrested the wrong killer years ago. These chapters really feel like the opening to any crime show (CSI, Criminal Minds, etc) where we know something bad is going to happen to them but we just don't know exactly what or how it will happen. A lot of the horror elements really work well together to create a very suspenseful and tense read that had me flipping pages like crazy. I also really liked the fairy tale element was incorporated. Michael would tell Heather stories from Grimms' Fairy Tales that are very bloody and horrifying in their own right. At one point, Michael asks Heather if she knows the story of sleeping beauty but the real version and not the sanitized Disney version. I thought it was an interesting parallel to draw between Michael's 'real story' and the sanitized version we get of serial killers in the media. Getting Michael's POV chapters and the thoughts behind some of his actions in the past really help give a fuller picture to the horrors that happened. There's a real atmosphere of gritty reality to this book that I think works really well. These horror elements reminded me very much of the Hannibal TV show so if that was up your alley then I think this book would work for you too.

Where I felt the story did fall a little short for me was the character work. I'm a character driven reader and I felt like this book felt more plot-focused than character focused. I do find this to be the case with a lot of these more detective thrillers / police procedural thrillers but since this one had the family connection with Heather and her mother, I was expecting a bit more character focus. I felt like most of the characters were pretty flat and could be categorized as 'the best friend' and 'the detective' but they were both so involved with the story that I wanted some more depth to them. Even Heather felt a little flat for me and we're told she had a tense relationship with her mom and was fired from her job due to some 'incident' but I just didn't see those traits coming out on the page. I wouldn't say the characters were underdeveloped - I actually really liked the information we got about them - but I just wanted a little more from them. It is like I can list off a bunch of facts about each of the characters and those facts seem like they should manifest in the actual character actions or thoughts on page but don't (or at least they don't in the way I'm looking for). I thought Michael was the most developed character and that was mostly due to the fact that we saw him grow up from a child into the serial killer in jail we see in Heather's chapters.

While the characters were a little flat to me, I thought the plotting was really well done. We started out the book when Heather arrives at her mother's house and she finds the letters pretty quickly. There isn't a lot of 'downtime' in this story even though most of the first half is just Heather talking to Michael and then Googling other serial killers with her best friend. It really felt like each scene was laying down another breadcrumb for Heather (and the reader) to follow to the truth. And there were underlying elements of psychological horror/thriller like Heather may or may not have seen someone outside her house in the dark. I did find a few of the middle plot points to be a bit convenient (Heather having sudden flashbacks to her childhood type of convenient) but they were pretty small in the grand scheme of the story so I wasn't too bothered by them. I really liked the amount of agency Heather had in the plot - she wasn't just some pawn that was being used by Michael and/or the police. The pacing was also really consistent with clue after clue being revealed at a pretty steady rate.

The ending reveals were fantastic and this is the first thriller in a long time that made me want to start reading it immediately after finishing so I could follow all the breadcrumbs. The ending reveals made everything suddenly click in place in the best way. For example, Michael would usually tell Heather a fairy tale during her visits and he would tell her that he's given her the information she's looking for but she isn't really listening. At the time, it really does seem like he's just telling her stories and maybe playing mind games but once we get to the end, we can look back at those stories and see how they line up with the truth. One part about the ending that I wasn't sure about is how much we were supposed to be questioning if these current murders were connected to the past murders. There's a small question posed earlier on in the book of if Michael was imprisoned incorrectly and maybe the current murders are being done by the same killer from the decades before (Michael has always said he was innocent). However, that particular issue wasn't really ever a question that the police or Heather really considered for more than a fleeting thought. So I just wasn't sure if the answer to that question was something we were supposed to be surprised by in the ending or not.

Overall, this was exactly what I want from a serial killer thriller. It was a dark and twisty read with great pacing and great reveals.


Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC in exchange for review

Expected publication date is June 8, 2021.

Heather returns home to bury her mother who committed suicide. While going through her mother's things, she finds multiple letters to Michael Reave, a serial killer known as "The Red Wolf." Baffled by the letters and her mom's suicide note, she digs deeper looking to figure out what drove her mom to suicide and why the suicide note is addressed to more than just Heather.

This is an atmospheric psychological horror story that slowly builds and then really takes off on you. Williams does a tremendous job of building the dread and fear. I found Heather to be a well developed and likable character. The pacing is great for the style of novel. The ending also took suspension of belief. I would recommend this to psychological thriller fans. Do be aware of one scene of animal cruelty at approximately the 30% mark of the book.

My thanks to Crooked Lane Books, author Jen Williams, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to the author, Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This dark and disturbing story is sure to find fans, but I personally found it hard going. Too much gore, too much self-involved inner dialogue and obtuse amateur sleuthing, and too many incredible coincidences that lead up to a final showdown that is all of that tied up in a bow. Atmospheric to a fault, but not the book for me.

4 stars

When Heather returns to her hometown following her mother's suicide, she discovers that her mom had been carrying on a decades-long correspondence with the notorious serial killer Michael Reave, aka The Red Wolf. This startling discovery comes at a time when a new serial killer is on the loose, whose MO is eerily similar to Reave's. Is it possible that Reaves wasn't the Red Wolf after all?

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The end seemed to reach just a little too much for my liking, which is why I gave it 4 instead of 5. It actually did manage to spook me a little bit, and I found myself captivated by Jen Williams' writing. I will definitely be looking for more of her books.

I was enjoying this book - its darkly creepy premise is interesting - until i got about 30 percent through. There I ran into a scene involving terrible animal abuse and I had to stop reading. I didn’t want to go on at that point, as I wasn’t sure if more of the same was in store for me.

Based on what I had read, it was looking like a four star book, but I can’t read anything involving mistreatment of animals so will need it dropthis down to 2.5., (although technically I did not finish it, so this rating does not count)

A Dark and Secret Place by Jen Williams is a recommended psychological horror novel.

Heather Evans returns home after a long absence to bury her mother who inexplicably committed suicide. While going through her things, she discovers a decades-long long correspondence her mother had with convicted serial killer Michael Reave, "the Red Wolf." He has been in prison for over 20 years, but currently there is a copycat out there, murdering young women and arranging their corpses in the same manner as Reave did to his victims. Heather shares the letters with the police and ends up visiting Reave in prison. It is also disturbing that her mother's suicide note is address "To you both," yet Heather was an only child - or was she? Heather begins searching for the truth.

The pace of this bleak, ominous tale moves rather slowly after a horrifying opening, delaying the obvious direction the plot will be predictably taking. The pace does pick up closer to the end and the novel becomes a scary, electrifying tale. As characters and information are introduce and presented in the first quarter of the novel, most readers of suspense novel will, like me, immediately make some obvious predictions. I have to admit that I didn't find Heather a very compelling main character. The creepy alternate-chapter characters were more interesting (and disturbing).

It is certainly a creepy, atmospheric novel that has some spine-tingling moments and several truly horrifying scenes. However I did predict the direction the novel would take early on, so, even though there were gruesome scenes I didn't predict, the direction wasn't surprising. The writing is good, and Williams layers on numerous clues to increase the creepiness and dread. There are a couple of scenes I could have done without, just saying. It really leans more toward a horror novel than a suspense novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and submitted to Amazon.

Heather Evans is a former journalist who lost her job under odd circumstances. Her mother's just committed suicide and Heather makes her way to the house to sort through things and make funeral arrangements.

Having left home at sixteen, Heather was a bit estranged from her mother, but she has no idea just how much information about her mother's life will come to the surface when she finds a box of letters, addressed to her mother from Michael Reave, a notorious serial killer.

It's now up to Heather to find out how her mother came to know such a man, and how deep the connection really goes...before it's too late.

This is an extremely captivating book. In part I think it's due to the horror elements. They had my brain working at full speed, wondering if there would be a supernatural twist to the story or not.

I had trouble stopping to eat and, you know, breathe because I was having too much fun reading. This book scared me, not many do. This is a very good thing.

The atmosphere is phenomenal and I found myself snapping out of thinking I'm actually in a deep dark forest about to be stalked and killed by unknown creatures.

It's fairly short, but feels longer. It might be that the words are close together so there's more of them overall? I don't know. I didn't mind.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I do and yet here we are. I'm still in awe.

The story was perfectly spooky and I kept getting annoyed at the small crumbs we were given because that was not fair. I need to know everything, and I need to know it now!!!

It came together nicely at the end. I guessed one of the plot twists early on, but it didn't make me enjoy the story any less.

Let's talk about the characters now.

Heather, while perfectly capable of defending herself, did make some stupid decisions. Like not calling the police each time after she found something amiss in her home. Someone's seemingly been inside and you just ignore it? Really Heather? Really?

Despite that, she's a good heroine. She's brave and willing to risk herself to save her friends. I like her.

Michael is another story. I wasn't sure if he was guilty or not until the end, even with the strong evidence against him. I was so convinced that there had to be something huge behind his innocence/guilt and in a way I was let down.

Colleen is one character I started off disliking and felt bad for by the end when everything she endured becomes clear. We only see her from Heather's perspective so it's nice to get different views too.

I still have some unanswered questions. One is about the forest creatures. We didn't learn enough about what's really out there. And the other is this big event that everything's been building up to. Why does it happen *NOW*, specifically? Why is that date/time special? Did I miss that somewhere?

Ok finally now, for those of you who may have scrolled to the bottom to see if the book is worth reading, YES. It definitely is. And it's worth rereading too.

*Huge thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review*

After her mother's sudden suicide Heather finds herself at home again after years away. Once there strange things start happening, things she tries to explain away, until she can't. When her mother's secret past is revealed she is left with more questions than answers. As a journalist she is compelled to seek out the truth at any cost and the path she finds herself will most certainly find her on very dangerous ground. A compelling read I could not put down!

When Heather's mother commits suicide, a strange note pushes her to investigate her mother's past and unearth secrets she could have never imagined.

While this book had a strong (albeit extremely grizzly) premise, the plot started to fizzle for me at around the 60% mark and I found myself caring less about the mystery of Heather's past and more just wanting the book to be wrapped up.

While it was interesting enough, and I didn't entirely predict the twist ending, I didn't find this to be a particularly memorable horror/thriller. I found myself liking Heather one moment and then not being able to stand her the next. And while I found Reave's character and his chapters intriguing, he had zero redeeming qualities whatsoever. The most compelling characters were Nikki and DI Parker and, unfortunately, the novel didn't offer enough of either of them for me to be able to give <u>A Dark and Secret Place</u> above a 3 star rating.

A woman returns to her childhood home after her mother’s death, only to discover that she’s been corresponding with a notorious serial killer. Meanwhile, a copycat killer is on the loose.

What can I say? It had potential, like all thrillers, but it lacked anything new to add to the genre. The mystery wasn’t very compelling, the outcome was in part too obvious (indeed, I had predicted it early on) and in part too ridiculous, and many elements were just too far-fetched (yes, random girl off the street, come talk to the serial killer – you’re the only one who can help us!)

There were parts in the book when I wasn’t convinced that author knew what the term ‘serial killer’ actually means, for example ‘You’re sure it’s a serial killer? Is he taking souvenirs?’ It makes a reader weary to have to wonder if the writer bothered to research the topic enough.

What I want from a thriller: plausible motivation behind actions, characters that are a little more 3D (I want to care if their lives are in danger), a surprise I didn’t see coming, just a bit… more.

It took me about two weeks to read this. I had to force myself to finish because every other book was more appealing, and I kept picking up something else.

A few grumbles:

They’re in the UK – stop writing chips when they are in fact eating crisps (a lot of crisps are eaten, it gets annoying).

It’s called Blu Tack.

Ditto parka.

Thanks NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.

This book was full of characters that were boring, unlikeable and/or killers. I wanted to quit reading after the animals were getting killed, but I slogged through to the end. This book felt very much like a B-rated horror movie.

Too dark and too slow for me. I'm not into mysteries with fairytale like solutions.
Writing is good just not my interest.

I didn’t get along with this story.

I really liked the idea. The daughter returns to her family home after the suicide of her mother, with whom she has not been close for years, and discovers that her mother has been in correspondence with a serial killer - Red Wolf - for many years. At the same time, more bodies of women are found killed in the same way as Red Wolf did. This is a very interesting idea that offers many possibilities. But I don't think they have been fully used.

The main character, Heather, is probably intentionally written as a character that is not easy to like. It's also obvious that there are many things in her past that she hides, including the reason why she no longer works as a journalist. There are also some hints in this book that Heather cannot be considered reliable. Unfortunately, I missed the bond with the main character in this story. For me, her actions sometimes lacked rational explanation, for example the reason why she does not inform the police that someone may be watching her. In fact, she seems to be ignoring these obvious signs too, and I don't quite understand why as they are more then obvious, and the situation looks dangerous.

The author, on the other hand, managed to create a dark atmosphere that makes you feel that something is seriously going on. Which in my opinion is because this story is linked to the darker versions of the Grimme brothers' fairy tales. As well as the stories told by the Red Wolf, and that many scenes take place in the dark.

I really appreciate the idea, it's a pity this book didn't work for me.

This book didn’t work for me, I’m afraid. The writing, at times, was confusing, and I found the plot to be too convoluted to come together in a cohesive way. Although I couldn’t connect with it, perhaps certain fans of horror will enjoy it.

Thank you Crooked Lane Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A dark and unsettling novel about a woman who is attempting come to terms with her mother's recent suicide only to discover...she never knew her mother at all! In fact, the more Heather uncovers, the mother she knew may have been hiding some deep, dark secrets including her connection to one of Europes most notorious serial killers!

The dark setting helps to provide a moody atmosphere that Heather must navigate to uncover the truth!