Trauma. How does one process is? How do you go about living your life after an insanely traumatic experience?

Sayers Wayte has everything. Money, friends and anything a 16 year old could want. Until he's kidnapped and told his parents are liars. While being held, the lines between fact and fiction start to blur and Sayers wonders if he can escape before getting completely lost.

This book was thiccc. A little over 500 pages. This book was intense. It's raw and emotional.

I won't lie, I HATED Saye at the beginning. He's an arrogant rich kid who thinks he's above everyone else. But I think that makes this book more real. Nobody is perfect. Everyone is flawed. People can endure trauma and come out the other side a different person.

This book is intense and heart-breaking. Proceed with caution. If you do read, I know y'all will love it!

I went into reading this like it would be a thriller, but it ended up being so much more than your average psychological thriller. The writing is masterful and brilliant taking you on a dark journey of a very privileged 16 year old who you don’t like, but don’t not like. He uses his privilege to his advantage by skirting through life getting away with things, including standing by while one of his so called friends bullies another innocent kid. Then one day he’s kidnapped and his entire life is turned up side down. Not only does the writer pull you through this insane plot twist as the MMC tries to survive, but the author digs deeper than just the thrill ride of the abduction. I cannot say more without giving anything away but I can say this is a must read. The writing was smart, captivating and emotional.

Wow! What did I just read? This book was not what I was expecting. It was so much more. This was a horrifying story about a teenage boy that is abducted then brainwashed to believe he was someone else.

At first, I didn’t like Sayers. He was a spoiled, egotistical bully, and I could picture him thinking how much better he was than anyone else. My feelings changed drastically once he was abducted though. For Roe to write a character that was so awful and completely make me change my opinion of him, was really impressive.

I felt such a sense of dread and claustrophobia while reading this book. It’s a psychological thriller, but there’s so much to this story. It tackles topics like bullying, losing hope, and finding faith in such a scary yet beautiful way. I was truly surprised by how much I liked this book, and Roe’s writing moved me. After finishing this book, I can’t stop thinking about it, and I know it will stay with me for a long time.

There are a lot of trigger warnings with this book that you should check out before reading it.

Dark Room Etiquette by @robinroewriter is a beautifully written YA story about trauma and redemption, and while I loved the redemption arc, readers should be warned that the characters go through a lot of trauma to get there.

High school junior Sayers Wayte is rich beyond my understanding and seemingly has a perfect life. Friends, a girlfriend, anything money can buy. But he’s a pretty terrible person. One could argue that he’s a product of his environment—an absent, childish father and a society mother who leaves her sixteen-year-old son with a nanny. But I think most readers will find him hard to like initially. Which is fine. I don’t need protagonists to be likeable. But when he’s kidnapped by a lunatic, it was hard to turn off that terrible voice in my head saying he kind of deserved it.

Of course he didn’t. No child deserves to be kidnapped, but the author sets up this impossible dichotomy from the beginning. It’s hard not to want Sayers punished for the way he’s treated people. Then Sayers develops an actual relationship with his kidnapper—who is abusive only some of the time—and I know that’s the definition of Stockholm Syndrome, but his kidnapper seems more interested in spending time with him than his parents were. So maybe we’re getting the reader’s version of Stockholm Syndrome too, which is a pretty brilliant construct.

This was a long book. I’ve seen other reviewers say that it flew by, and the chapters are short, but for me it felt all of its 500 pages. There are three, maybe even four distinct acts. One before the kidnapping, two different stages during the kidnapping, and one after and it’s a lot to process. I personally wanted a little less trauma on the page, but that may be the exact reason the story is so effective.

I think readers who like dark books with redemption arcs will love this one, but don’t go in expecting a psychological thriller in the mystery sense. This book is an exploration of trauma with really compelling writing and an incredibly layered, complex main character.

Sayers Wayte is an entitled rich boy. He’s the definition of ennui. He’s bored with life, and he never laughs anymore, at least, according to his best friend he doesn’t. He’s charming, popular, and he’s friends with bullies. But he doesn’t care when the bullies take things too far. He doesn’t care about anything.

That is, until he’s abducted by a redneck who’s convinced he’s his long-lost son. He’s held captive in a place that’s the exact opposite of the luxuries he’s grown to take for granted. Gone are his fancy car, his mother’s mansion, the meticulously cooked food that his chef prepares for him. It’s a rude awakening for Sayers, and that’s just the beginning of it. It’s clear that the man who abducted him is delusional and dangerous, and Sayers’ life is in danger. Will he be able to escape–with his sanity intact?

Wow! This book is both thought-provoking and thrilling. It has shades of Room by Emma Donoghue (but far more readable!), where it’s so much more than just a thriller. It explores the teenage mind and the effects of extreme trauma. I could not put it down!

This book is quite long, and we get to see a lot of Sayers’ life before he gets abducted. We see firsthand how he’s not a good person. We love to hate him, because he’s sarcastic, and the ways that he describes things are quite humorous, but as readers, we see how his actions are hurting those around him. He’s attending high school, and there are little nuggets throughout these scenes that foreshadow what’s to come. this includes when he attends his psychology class, and the teacher talks about a whole slew of conditions that might just afflict him later on…

The book has a few fantastic plot twists, including a new direction it takes later on that I didn’t see coming. Given the length of the book, I’d recommend not starting it too close to bedtime! You won’t be able to put it down… 5 stars!

🛑📚 BOOK TOUR STOP & REVIEW! 🛑📚

Dark Room Etiquette by Robin Roe
Pub Date: 10/11/2022
4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

First, thank you to @letstalkbookspromo @robinroewriter and @harperteen for my advanced copy of this read and for having me a part of this tour just in time for spooky season!

This was a page- turner for sure and had me tense all throughout trying to figure out what was real and what was fake. I really enjoyed this read!

Definitely a YA read. And a YA approach to Stockholm Syndrome in a delicate manner. Some tough topics discussed as well!

I didn’t really connect with Sayers in the beginning. I went through many emotions with him. He was a bully. He was also lost. But as the story goes I start to feel differently and want a better outcome than what is! Side characters are well developed too! I loved Evan and jus wanted to always keep him safe!

I enjoyed how we saw before, during, and after throughout this read and recommended this for spooky season to all!

That is all! As always, happy reading! 💕

My feelings about this book range from strong to very strong. At the beginning, Sayers isn’t a very likeable guy. Sure, he’s not the one actively tormenting another boy in his class. He’s just the one standing by, watching it happen. He’s spoiled, rude, and unaffected by other people’s pain. We get to know this version of him over the first quarter or so of the book.

Then he gets kidnapped by someone who seems to be deeply unwell. At first Sayers refuses to cooperate with his abductor. But as time goes on and escape continues to be an impossibility, he does what he must in order to survive.

The book feels like an exploration of what trauma does to someone. Both in the way it breaks someone down, and in the way that it leaves permanent marks on that person’s life, even after the traumatic event is over.

I’m not at all an expert on trauma or how it affects anyone. I’ve watched someone close to me grapple with past trauma, and some of the things Sayers does and says were familiar to me because of that experience. I liked that the whole story wasn’t an exploration of the trauma itself. I liked that Sayers formed different relationships and that his relationships operated differently as he began to piece things back together. He valued different things. He wanted different things. But he also wasn’t capable of some of the things he’d been capable of before.

So there were lots of things I liked, but it was a hard book to read. I think the hardest part was witnessing the breakdown Sayers endures during his captivity.

I think readers who enjoyed A LIST OF CAGES will enjoy DARK ROOM ETIQUETTE. I think fans of WHAT UNBREAKABLE LOOKS LIKE by Kate McLaughlin should check this one out.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperTeen for this e-ARC for my review!

WOW, WOW, WOW!! Beautifully written by new-to-me author, Robin Roe. I was so blown away by this thrilling, heart-breaking story. I felt so many emotions. Everything in this book felt so real! Dark Room Etiquette kept me on the edge of my seat. It’s thrilling, creepy, and thought-provoking. I could not put this book down. And I didn’t want it to end!!

Hands down, BEST psychological thriller I’ve read this year!
READ THIS BOOK!

Wow, talk about a roller coaster of trauma. This book is chock full of it and really is very multifaceted. I did not like Saye at the beginning, which worried me since this was my first Robin Roe book, but as I moved through the story I came to understand while he was portrayed the way he was. This is a story of his trauma, but also his healing, finding out who he is and where he fits after experiencing the trauma that he went through. While this book is a pretty long read, it was hard to put down and kept hold of me all the way.

While there were definitely a lot of moments in this story that were hard to read, but overall it was an amazing story. Saye isn't the only character that has depth, but many of the side characters did as well. Do keep in mind that this is a trauma filled story, if you're not able to handle stories of kidnapping, torture, abuse, sexual assault, death and more - tread carefully and be mindful that this story goes very dark.

I just finished this book and my mind is still reeling. I was sucked into this story after just a few chapters and I genuinely had no idea how it would end. I felt for Sayers and the hell that he had been through but I absolutely hated him at the beginning of the book.

I felt that the middle of the book could’ve been condensed a bit. Some of the chapters felt like the same thing over and over… but maybe that was also part of the point.

The ending of the book had me confused. I felt like the ending was so rushed and there were so many loose ends that we never got answers to! It left me a bit frustrated not having the answers.

This was a good book, it’s an easy read and despite being a longer book it felt like a quick read.

Thank you to the author #robinroe, #netgalley and #harperteen for the #gifted copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

OK, this one was UNSETTLING....

From the very first chapter you know something bad is going to happen and you're just waiting for the who and the how and the when. I thought this was going to be a rich kid turned on his head plot but it was so much more.

The author did an excellent job of taking us through Sayer's psyche as he endures a most horrifying situation and honestly it is both terrifying and amazing to understanding what the mind does to survive.

There is a before, a during and an after, and each part will tug at different places in your emotions. I started wondering what I would do if I was in the during or the after. How I would survive. Or what if it was someone I knew? How would I react to them? This book definitely got into my head.

I highly recommend if you are looking for something psychologically twisted and tension filled. Somehow, despite the length, I read it one sitting! I definitely think there were parts the book could have been trimmed down though.

Thank you Robin Roe, NetGalley and Harper Teen for an advanced egalley of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Sayers Wayte is in the “in” crowd at high school. He is extremely rich, privileged and does whatever he wants. Of course that makes him completely insufferable. As he goes through high school with his group of classmates like him, you can feel the sense of dread building. When he gets kidnapped and finds himself living with a man who tells him his life is a lie, he must adapt to get himself out of this situation. But when you’re telling lies to yourself and your captor all day, how to keep straight what is true and what is a lie?

I went into this one for the spook factor and about halfway it had me in my feelings! This book is enthralling, diving into the disgusting side of humanity and what grief can truly push a person to do. While the characters came across as unlikeable and entitled, I thought it fit and really helped build the story! As I flew through the short chapters, I didn’t even realize this was over 500 pages. This story shows how someone can change and grow in extreme circumstances. I liked that the author went deep into mental health and physical and mental trauma, and still was such a suspenseful thriller!

I am a huge YA fan, so I was really looking forward to this book. A taut and suspenseful mystery/thriller, I found it to be emotionally hard-hitting and an in-depth (and often uncomfortable) discussion of privilege, abuse and the effects of trauma.

Sayers Wayte is the teenager with everything - handsome, popular, a family with connections, a beautiful girlfriend, and all the trappings of wealth. Until he's kidnapped, literally *chained up,* and told that his entire life may be predicated on a lie. Talk about a mind flip. Now Sayers must muddle his way through not only his captivity but everything that he thought he knew about himself, his past, and his family.

You still start out hating Sayers in the beginning of this book. He is definition of affluenza. But watching him evolve over time - told tangibly through his literal kidnapping - is cathartic. You go from hating this kid to caring about him deeply. I think part of that is the wonderful writing by Robin Roe. Sometimes (YA) thrillers can feel choppy in an effort to keep the action moving, but that is not the case with this book - it's a quick read to be sure (but long! 500+ pages), but it doesn't feel trite. As an attorney, I regularly counsel clients who are dealing with trauma and I routinely take trainings to be better able to assist them. I found the representation of the experience/effects/aftermath of trauma to be dead on. Robin Roe has counseled teens and worked with special education kiddos and her expertise shows in this book. 

If you like forthright, suspenseful thrillers, I highly recommend grabbing this book

Dark Room Etiquette by Robin Roe, 512 pages. HarperTeen (HarperCollins Publishers), 2022. $19.
Language: R (96 swears, 26 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG13
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
Sayers is a junior who doesn’t have to care about anything because of his name and the money his family has. He does what he wants and goes with the flow, even when he doesn’t agree with his friends. And then Sayers ends up in a situation where he can’t leave the strange house he wakes up in, saying his own name is punished, and the man there doesn’t care about his money.
At first, I was disappointed with Sayer’s choices, especially when he changed from doing nothing to helping facilitate his friends’ bullying behavior. Then he gets taken and all of his choices are stripped away, changing both his story and his character drastically. Watching Sayers morph through the different phases of his story was both tragic and heartening – despite all his dark times, Sayers finds light.
Sayers is depicted as White on the cover, and most other characters are implied White. That mature content rating is for underage drinking, drug abuse, innuendo, partial nudity, illegal activity, mention of sex and rape, harassment, and sexual assault. The violence rating is for gun use, mention of murder, and suicide.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

Thank you @harperteen @letstalkbookspromo & @netgalley for my #gifted digital copy and my spot on the tour.

This exceptional teen suspense novel explores trauma and its after-effects. The intriguing story is told from the main character Sayers’ point of view. Though just over 500 pages, I found it to be a quick read. The story was eerie and raised a lot of questions for me and I felt compelled to keep reading in order to discover the truth about what was going on.

Sayers is a 16-year-old boy who has everything. He comes from a wealthy family. He drives an Aston Martin. He has a beautiful girlfriend.

The problem is, he is arrogant and oblivious to the problems and feelings of those around him. Then one night he is kidnapped and forced to follow rules and live in a style vastly different from his privileged lifestyle. He struggles to escape as he also gets to know his kidnapper and before long, he can’t separate truth from fiction.

Speechless. Beautifully written story. Robin Roe has managed to create a psychological thriller novel with a heart-breaking, thought-provoking story that goes beyond limits. How do you survive trauma? We often read stories about trauma, the past and present but seldomly are we able to find a novel that shows the aftermath. Sayers was a character with layers, you see his growth throughout the novel. The strong dislike for him at the beginning of the novel has you wanting to hug him by the end. Going beyond the main character, we get a look at the multi-dimensional side characters that build the story and showcase the main character in different parts of his life. A fast-paced 500+ page book that took me on an emotional rollercoaster has left me thinking about it way after having finished it.

After having read A List of Cages, Robin Roe became a favorite author and Dark Room Etiquette further establishes it. With DRE being one of the best books I have read this year! I cannot wait to see what future projects Robin has for us.

𝚃𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐: Bullying, Kidnapping, Trauma Child Abuse, Mental Illness, Sexual Assault

Special thanks to Robin Roe, NetGalley and HarperCollins for sharing a digital advanced reader copy with me in exchange for my honest review.

I was so excited to see Robin Roe had a new book coming out. I loved A List of Cages and have been waiting to see more from her since then. Dark Room Etiquette is a book that runs you through every single emotion you can think of and then some. I started off the book hating the main character and by the end of it, I just wanted to give him a hug. I haven't stopped thinking about the book since I finished it and keep getting mad that no one else I know has read it. There are so many layers to the story and it is written so you never quite know what is going on or what to believe. My anxiety was rampant throughout but I think that can be attributed to the way the story was written and part of the point. It was so so good.

Thank you to Let's Talk Books Promo for an early gifted copy of this book. Dark Room Etiquette is out now and please come find me after you read it so we can talk.

I loved this book! When I pick up a book, I always hope for it to make me feel something. Well, this book made me feel so many things. There were times that the book made me uncomfortable because the scenes felt so real. This says a lot about the quality of the writing because I really felt like I was there watching these things happen and it was hard. I went into the book blindly, as I usually try to do, which I would recommend other readers try to do because I think that some events in the book will have a bigger impact if you don’t know they are coming. I am so glad that I picked up this book.

The characters in this book go through some very serious traumatic experiences. This is not a light read because the things that happen in this book are truly horrible. I thought that the author did a fantastic job of illustrating just how these characters might have reacted and dealt with the things that were out of their control. The characters change in various ways over the course of the story and I wanted more than anything to see them come out okay.

I would highly recommend this book to others. This was a powerful story that I will not soon forget. I went through a wide range of emotions while reading this book and found it impossible to put down. I actually ended up reading the bulk of the book during 4 hours period where I didn’t let the book leave my hands. The author definitely knows her stuff and I appreciated the author’s note at the end of the book. I will definitely plan to read more of this author’s work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from HarperTeen.

Dark Room Etiquette is a dark and disturbing story of Sayers, a sixteen year old previleged boy who gets kidnapped and is trapped in a windowless room.

The author Robin Roe approached me to ask if I would be interested in reading and reviewing her new novel. I am glad I agreed because I was blown away by Dark Room Etiquette. The prologue sucked me in right away. I loved the thriller aspects in the first one third of the book but what I wasn't expecting was how much I would love the writer's haunting prose that perfectly explores the aftermath of trauma, resilience and hope.

The characters were multi dimensional and I liked to see their transformation from the beginning to the end. I disliked the main character Sayers in the beginning mainly because of his stuck up, selfish behaviour but that quickly changed as I started to feel sympathy for him after seeing him vulnerable and fearful.

A profound and thrilling read. It made me think of the capabilities of humans when it comes to survival and more importantly it made me feel. I also appreciated the author's note at the end and these lines will stay with me for a long long time.

'The characters in this book are each doing their best to cope with their individual experiences, but trauma can feel like a dark room. We live in it or maybe it lives in us, and it can become a place we're not sure we can ever escape'

I highly recommend this book to literally everyone but please make sure to check out the trigger warnings first. After reading this book, I will definitely be on the lookout for whatever Robin writes next.

Thank you @robinroewriter @harperteen @netgalley for the digital advance reader copy.

The author, Robin Roe, reached out to me on Instagram to ask if I would read her latest novel Dark Room Etiquette and I said yes. The premise of the story is completely up my alley and even though it's a beefy 500+ pages, as a YA novel that is a quick read for me. It took me about six hours to read the story from cover to cover and I have a major bone to pick with it, the authors note should have come at the beginning of the story and here is why.

Sayers is a largely unlikeable character, but for the purpose of the story development he has to be. Spoiled rich kid who wants for nothing is kidnapped by a delusional serial killer who believes he's found his long, lost son, Daniel. Through intense abuse, isolation and brainwashing, Sayers begins to believe he is Daniel and develops an attachment for his capture, Caleb. Upon his rescue Sayers finds himself back at school with his old friends as he tries to process the trauma.

Up until Sayers was rescued I felt the book was good. It read long and a bit overhanded but good. By overhanded I mean the psychology class that just happened to be covering Stockholm Syndrome, the students talking about implanted memories and first person witness unreliability and the security guard who rushes Sayers because he got lost on the job. Even without reading the synopsis it was pretty clear to see where the story was going.

After Sayers rescue is where I became frustrated as a reader. Sayers family has resources and yet therapy was a choice and he was never deprogrammed? Penny, a girl with less resources, was sent to an in-patient facility and Sayers was left with nothing? This made no sense. No one would have just allowed Sayers to go back to school without some form of support or accommodations. I was so distracted by this frustration that I could not wait for the book to be over.

Now to Sayers captor Caleb. Despite having freezers full of dead boys, he chose to kill himself instead of Sayers. Why? This stuck out to me as strange.

The character of Garrett, the budding sociopath that sexually assaults a male classmate, where does he go? So much time in the first half of the novel was spent talking about him, what he does and how he terrifies Evan but is then almost completely out of the ending. I understand Garrett, along with most of Sayers friends abandon him, but as a reader it left me unsatisfied.

And Evan, sweet Evan, I know he was a vessel to show Sayers' better side but their friendship never felt genuine or real.

Once I read the authors note I was more frustrated then what I finished the final chapter. It was pretty clear that the author wanted to show what trauma does and how it affects many aspects of someone's life, but the execution was poorly written. Once I read the authors note I then had to think about the book under a new lens. Which is why, despite finishing the book days ago, it's taken me this long to give feedback. Had the note come at the beginning and I understood what the author was trying to achieve, I probably wouldn't have spent the last half of the quarter of the book frustrated. As a rule, I do not DNF books when I'm asked by an author to read it. Had I not been, this is a book I would have put down and then would have never learned about the authors nephew and her inspiration for this novel.

Overall, the novel had a promising theme but the execution was not all there for me. I also think it could have been culled down significantly and achieved the same story.

As always, thank you to NetGalley, author Robin Roe and Harper Teen for allowing me access to an eARC in exchange for feedback.