Thank you St. Martins Press and Netgalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book is due for Publication 1/11 and I definitely recommend it.

Wow! This is a debut novel?! Unbelievable! Such great writing. I had suspicions of quite a few characters at one point which made this book so suspenseful. Just when you think you know who it is…you’re wrong. You might be wrong a few times. Amazing read. Couldn’t put it down.

I had access to the ebook and the audio, both. The narrators are also amazing on the audio.

I had a harder time getting invested in this story,

First - I felt like I had to suspend reality to really get into this.

Second - unreliable narrators are fun, but I think the drug/alcohol unreliability is played out and that felt very central here.

Third - it was predictable. Still a fun ride, but I spotted it right away.

This was good - I enjoyed it, but not a favorite read of the year.

I cannot believe this is a debut. I feel like this year I really read a lot of very wonderful talented debut authors.

I have some mixed feelings on this one however. I know most people are in total love with it. I did like it as well, however I big issue for me was figuring out the major plot twist half way through the book was even over. So I will admit I kind of got a bit bored. Now there are plenty of other red herrings and curves in the road. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty enough to surprise. I also don’t know if I kind the overuse of the word “flicker” to have been genius or annoying….

That being said I really appreciated how the author wrote about someone living with trauma, anxiety and a bunch of other difficult mental aspects that can be extremely challenging and debilitating. She wrote from a place of truth and it felt like firsthand knowledge. She also makes for a really unreliable narrator which is always fun when reading a thriller. Now I know most people always complain more then they compliment. I am not saying I did not like this or that it wasn’t good it just had some issues, therefore my rating of 4 and not 5.

I'm so impressed this is a debut novel! This book was so good and I really enjoyed it. The writing was captivating and the story was addicting. This book immediately drew me in and I had a hard time putting it down! It had me suspicious of all of the characters and left me second guessing myself almost as much as Chloe did. Speaking of Chloe, for being so smart she spent so much of the book being DUMB. I wanted to scream at her on more than one occasion 😆 but overall I e joyed her tenacity and and her journey to uncover the truth. Fans of slow burn mysteries will surely love this one. I look forward to reading more from Willingham in the future!

Thank you St. Martins Press and Netgalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book is due for Publication 1/11 and I definitely recommend it.

What initially caught my attention with this one was the comparison to Karin Slaughter and that is high praise my friends, she is definitely the queen of crime fiction to me. Then, when I read the synopsis and saw it was debut I was even more intrigued and then the final selling point for me was the serial killer angle. All of that combined not only sounded perfect to me, it actually delivered too and I don’t say that lightly, I haven’t read a thriller that I enjoyed this much since These Silent Woods, it was incredibly good!

I used this coffee mug in my pic on purpose, I seriously muttered WTF to myself several times while reading this one as it kept making me guess and then second guess myself a million times. Always the sign of a strong thriller, right? So a very strong plot and it was coupled with an emotional component that made me see where the Karin Slaughter comparison came from, definitely a character driven book that was emotionally charged. The writing was also really great, seriously impressed it was a debut but overall highly recommended by me if you like clever thrillers that will stay with you. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

GIVE ME A THRILLER, BUT MAKE IT ART.✨

A Flicker in the Dark features a troubled psychologist named Chloe, who helps people overcome trauma. If anyone knows pain, it’s Chloe. When she was 12 years old, her father was arrested for murdering numerous teenage girls, and her world as she knew it would never be the same.

Chloe continues to struggle in adulthood to come to terms with the heavy feelings of her beloved father being a serial killer. Now, around the 20th anniversary, new strings of murders mirroring those of Chloe’s past begin to happen again.

The book flashes back and forth between the memories of her father’s arrest and the current murders, and takes the reader on a dark journey into the psychological abyss of fear and human monsters.

This story examines how people can have two sides. Someone can be a warm hug to one person and a cold slap to another. A feeling of safety, but also the danger beneath the surface.

Overall, this is a SOLID debut with some fun twists. I was extremely impressed with Willingham’s lyrical writing style, which had far more depth than a typical thriller tends to. It may be a bit much for some people, but for me it was just right.

3.5 ⭐. I think I'm quite critical when it comes to thrillers as I've read many and know what I like/don't like. I really thought I knew where the story was heading the whole time and I had no idea what to expect given that this is Willingham's debut novel. I was pleasantly surprised by the last 50 pages that it was not anything I had predicted at all. However, I will say that pretty much all the gratification and pay-off of the reading experience comes at the end, so I found the majority of the story a tad slow. Nonetheless, for a debut novel, this thriller was pretty damn good.

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Stacy Willingham for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When Chloe was 12 there was a serial killer on the loose, targeting young teenage girls. Her father was arrested for the murders, pleaded guilty and was sent to prison. Now, 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist and although suffering from her childhood trauma, she is trying to move forward in her life, although, unfortunately, with the help of alcohol and pills. As she prepares for her wedding, a string of copycat murders sends her in a downward spiral. Has her stress and anxiety caused her to see connections where there aren’t any or is a killer coming after her? The story is told in alternating chapters between the present day and flashbacks to her childhood.

But, I’m tired of a narrator who is unreliable due to consuming copious amounts of alcohol and pills. I guessed the ending immediately, but the author did a good job throwing in plenty of red herrings and a couple of other unexpected twists.

The story requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, which is OK if I find the writing and plotting to be stellar. However, there was a lot of repetitiveness and extraneous details that felt like filler, plus there were a few things that took me out of the story, such as staying at a cut-rate highway motel, then mentioning the chocolate placed on her pillow, the overuse of the word flicker, and the flowery language with too many adjectives and an abundance of nonsensical metaphors like swallowing pills that “tear down her esophagus like jagged nails trying to claw their way back up”, and “air warm and damp like a boiled egg burp”, "a constellation of freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, as if someone had taken a pinch and sprinkled them on like salt".

The mystery was strong enough to stand on its own without the alcohol/drug use and the flowery language. This is the author's debut and I hope in the future she will tone it down.

For Chloe Davis old wounds are reopened when missing girls go missing in her hometown, reminiscent of crimes committed years earlier by her father. This took my emotions on a roller coaster ride, it was so good. The mystery went in one direction and then took another turn all together with many red herrings along the way. Stacy Willingham is an author to watch!

Many thanks to Netgalley, Minotaur Books and Stacy Willingham for my complimentary e-copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

What a great story that kept this reader glued to the pages! The tension never lets up and the story, although it had many facets to it, pulled all the strings together to create a believable suspense story. Although it had a fair share of foibles, it was an engrossing story, that had me guessing on every page as to the killer's identity.

This is one that will keep you reading into the middle of the night.

Poor Chloe Davis, was just a fifteen-year-old girl who was shy and reserved. Unlike her effervescent brother who had a plethora of friends. When their father is accused and convicted of killing six teenage girls.., it sends this family into a state of turmoil. This family seemed to have unknowingly lived with a serial killer.

The bulk of the story takes place twenty years later when Chloe, a psychologist, is preparing for her big day to a man who has more or less swept her off her feet. Horrendous occurrences happen when two young girls are missing and then found dead bearing the imprints of the way in which her father killed his victims. Is there a copycat killer on the loose?

Due to all the trauma in her life, Chloe is not the most stable person and with a combination of that and pills, she imagines one man after the other being the killer. She is definitely unstable but determined that she will find the killer and right the wrongs done.

Along the way, she examines her life and also finds within herself courage and many surprises lurking in the corners.

While Jan and I enjoyed the story, I did like it better than she did. We both hope that Stacy will continue to write and allow us be able to read another story from this newbie author.

Thank you to Stacy Willingham, a new author, Minotaur Books, and NetGalley for a copy of this propulsive thriller.

What a fantastic thriller to open up the new calendar year! This one is going to be on many people's to be read list of 2022 and for good reason! HBO Max has already picked this book up for a limited series coming in the future starring Emma Stone and that all I could imagine as I read through this story!

This felt different from most of the recent thrillers that I've read where the build up wasn't too obvious but you knew to keep your guard up around certain characters. This is going to translate really well to the small screen with eerie tones and suspicious characters that blend into the background until their moment to shine. And bravo to the author for this being a debut novel! I cannot wait to see what she chooses to write next.

A dark & creepy thriller about the daughter of a serial killer. Or is he? This was fantastically good. So well written, chock full of twist and turns and such an explosive ending! Thank you so much for allowing me to read this!

Chloe Davis is a psychologist with more issues than her patients... 20 years ago one seemingly normal summer her 12 year old life was turned upside down when girls in her small town started going missing and it’s her father who is arrested and labeled as a serial killer for the deaths of those 6 girls. All these years later her seemingly well put together life is falling apart when girls start going missing again and things are far too similar to what happened before... but her father has been in prison all this time so he can’t be responsible so it must be a copycat... right? Chloe is a month a way from marrying her perfect fiancé but her life is spiraling out of control. Why? Because somehow these new murders seems to have one thing connected and that’s her...

Ehh... the story wasn’t bad but Chloe was beyond irritating. I guessed how it was going to end up going though I can admit to almost being swayed in my opinion. Chloe was however rather oblivious and way too trusting of a stranger and jumped to conclusions and was so reckless. And really did I mention she was annoying? I would read more of author’s work in the future.

3.5 stars

No spoilers: This was a quick enjoyable thriller. I knew who the killer was from the beginning, I felt it was a little obvious but I have a tendency to always know who the killer is anyway so the reveal may still surprise people.

The pacing was great, it never dragged at any point for me and had enough things happening that I wasn’t bored reading it at any point. The story was intriguing and had plenty of twists and red herrings. The characters and dialogue all felt well written and real.

So why only 3.5 stars? It was good not great. There was nothing that really stood out to me. I enjoyed it, and will recommend it to others but nothing about it was exceptional and made me want to shout about it from the rooftops.

This mystery/thriller follows Chloe Davis. When she was 12, her father was arrested and pled guilty to the abduction and murder of six teenage girls. Now, nearly 20 years later Chloe is a psychologist and she's planning her upcoming wedding. But when the news reports a local teenage girl has gone missing, Chloe can't shake the familiar feeling. She knows it is probably just paranoia and she's seeing patterns between the two cases that might not mean anything. But as more girls start going missing, the links between her old life and her new one are too strong to ignore and Chloe finds herself, for the second time in her life, close to a killer.

TW/CW: prescription drug abuse, self harm

I really loved the premise and set up of this story. Willingham quickly introduced us to this world and these characters and then pulled the rug out a bit when we find out about Chloe's childhood. The trope of 'is the new killer a copycat or did we miss something back then' is well-loved for a reason and it does a great job of creating tension in the characters as well as the reader. I thought the balance between the events in Chloe's childhood and the current day plot was really well done and there were some great back and forth moments. I thought the flashbacks to the past were well done and, even though we know the outcome from the beginning, they were still written in a very tense way and were connected to the current day crimes. So, as an example, Chloe wonders if someone was watching or following one of the current victims and then she remembers seeing her dad watching some of the girls in the past. I really liked the choice to have Chloe be old enough in the past to distinctly remember the events. I think a lot of time with these copy-cat serial killer plots, the protagonist in the past was younger and maybe didn't remember things correctly or didn't realize something they saw was so important until they're an adult. In this case, Chloe was old enough back then and we see right from the opening few chapters just how much of an impact that summer had on her life decades later.

I thought the characters were really well done. Chloe is a really interesting character to follow for this story because we see the direct impact her father's crimes have on her even 20 years later. Then, when the current girls are missing, we see her start to unravel a bit. As much as I like multi-POV thrillers, I think the choice to only follow Chloe was a good one and really helped solidify that she is somehow connected to these new crimes. I think it makes for an interesting conflict when Chloe and the people around her start to question her motives or her thought process which made me wonder a few times if Chloe is an unreliable narrator. We also get a good mix of side characters and I would have liked more from them. We get a good amount of Chloe's interactions with her fiance, which makes sense, but I would have liked to see more interactions with the receptionist at her office, for example. I think there were some missed opportunities to see how other people felt about Chloe's reactions to the crimes and maybe using that for some additional tension. The interactions we do get on page were used very effectively, I just would have liked more sort of lenses for us to see Chloe through. I think Willingham does a great job at writing characters who really felt authentic and natural. None of the conversations, even the brief ones, felt stiff or robotic which I sometimes find in these single POV thrillers.

There were a couple moments in the last 25% or so where the narrative structure was a little odd for me. We'd end a chapter with two characters about to have a discussion (where a big plot point would most likely be revealed) and I would expect the next chapter to start with that conversation. However, the next chapter would have skipped the whole conversation and fast forward to a few hours later when then we'd get the aftermath/Chloe's reaction to that information. So, for a non-book example it would be along the lines of "mom sat me down to tell me something important. Chapter 2. Driving to school the next day, I kept replaying the conversation of mom telling me I was adopted". The majority of the book was not written like this so when it happened a few times it was a bit jarring. The present day story-line takes place over only a couple of weeks so there isn't that much time-jumping that needs to happen. Since this tactic wasn't used during the more mundane times in the story, when it did happen during the high-tension points it did come across as a little gimmick-y and I would be a bit confused when the new chapter started. I do think if it was done earlier in the story it wouldn't be so jarring because by the time I got to the last time this was used in the end reveal/twist I was used to it and actually thought it was used very effectively.

The twist/reveal at the end got me in the best way possible. At about the 10% mark, I had a certain character pegged as the bad guy. There were so many great lines that could either be read 100% innocently or could come across as menacing. I think this was a great way to start leading the reader in one direction while making sure the breadcrumbs weren't super obvious and heavy-handed. I really liked how the twist/reveal at the end did include these little hints but just not in the way the reader was expecting. Through 80% of the book, I was convinced Character X was bad and normally I would feel a little tricked or cheated when that character turns out to not be the big bad of the story. However, I think the fact that all those hints we were getting did lead to a revelation about that character softened the blow. I had the thought when I got to the end of "well, I was right that X was shady because of A, B, and C" which almost felt as good as if I would have guessed the twist ahead of time. When I was reading, I was so incredibly sure of myself and of what the reveal would be that when it was flipped around I said aloud "ah, she got me! I fell for it!" There was also a good amount of groundwork laid for the real bad guy's reveal but I was so focused on my main suspect that I sort of ignored these other points which just made the reveal at the end even better. I've never been so wrong when guessing an ending yet so satisfied by the actual reveal.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read. Great premise, interesting and flawed characters, well-crafted tension, and a good payoff at the end. This is Willingham's debut novel so I'd be very interested to read more from her in the future.

Thanks NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is January 11, 2022

This book was amazing! It hooked me right from the beginning and even though I thought I had it figured out, there was so much more to it! Thought provoking and unique, this novel is definitely one to put on your reading list in January! Thank you netgalley for my review copy.

I was extremely excited to read this book. With all of the hype surrounding it and after reading the premise, it sounded super thrilling. However, I was a little disappointed. While the prose is well written, the plot itself was pretty basic. I guessed the main twist pretty early on, which is saying something because I am terrible at guessing twists in thrillers. I just don’t know what this book brings to the table that hundreds of other thrillers with the same plot twist don’t.

**4.5-stars**

When Chloe Davis was 12-years old, her father was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of six teenage girls, based on evidence that Chloe herself had uncovered. After her father was taken away, Chloe, her mother and her older brother, were left trying to put back together the pieces of their shattered lives.

It was rough. In their small Louisiana town the shroud of guilt was always upon them. They ended up moving because of it. People were suspicious of her Mom, that she possibly knew something she didn't reveal. It wasn't a good situation. Traumatic to say the least.

Twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist working with young girls suffering through varying traumas, liked she did herself. Chloe is also preparing for her wedding to Daniel, a man she has known for just a year. Her brother, Cooper, thinks the marriage is too quick. Him and Daniel have never been warm and fuzzy with one another. That alone is stressful enough, but when teenage girls begin to go missing, one of them a patient of Chloe's, she's triggered into a really dark place.

Chloe's worked so hard to forget the past. To move on and find a bit of happiness for herself. Now it seems the past has come back to haunt her. The pattern of the current crimes isn't just similar to that of her father's. It's identical. Is there a copycat working in Baton Rouge?

Before she knows it, Chloe finds herself steeped in the investigation. She needs to get to the bottom of it. It seems too close to home, like it's intentional. Like this new killer is trying to draw her in. Is Chloe paranoid and seeing connections where there aren't any, or is she dangerously close to the truth?

A Flicker in the Dark is a hugely promising and intense debut. Willingham's writing style is extremely fluid and fast-paced, sucking me in from the very first chapter. I loved Chloe as a main character. Her flaws made her not just believable, but relatable. Her struggles were real. I felt them; the self-medicating being particularly impactful.

While I found certain aspects of the story toed the line of predictability, I nonetheless had a fun time reading it. If this is her debut, I predict a long and successful career in Willingham's future. I definitely plan to be following along.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Macmillan Audio, for providing me with a copy to read and review. This is a great book. One that every Mystery/Thriller Fan should pick up

A Flicker in the Dark grabbed me straight from the beginning. I got a little annoyed fairly early on because of the overuse of the word flicker or flickering but not enough so to stopreading. A book about the child of a serial killer and what their lives are like after the fact, was a fascinating concept. I couldn't help but think that main character, Chloe, didn't seem to learn anything at all from her experience as she never seemed to be able to spot red flags in others or herself. This one did keep me guessing. I had several theories and one ended up being correct but it also ended up being the one that irritated me most. It's fast-paced so it made for a quick read that I enjoyed overall.

Debut author, but written like a much more experienced writer was behind the keyboard, is how I would describe A Flicker in the Dark. Stacy Willingham has brought us a one sitting thriller. Let’s hope she has many more in her.

Full of strongly voiced characters, even the ones I disliked. They all had a viewpoint that was important to the plot.

If I might point out a couple of items that did bother me. First, Chloe definitely has a drug and/or an alcohol problem. This was never treated even at the end of the book. This issue is important to her credibility throughout the book, but some readers might have trouble with it never having been resolved.

Secondly, throughout most of the middle the book lagged. There was a bit of wavering back and forth as to who dunnit. It would have benefited from a sharp eyed editor.

Overall, an enjoyable day’s read. Thank you #NetGalley.