This is the second book in the Rachel Krall series and I actually enjoyed it more than the first. Rachel, a journalist turned true crime podcaster/crime solver is called upon to meet an inmate who is scheduled to be released from prison in the next 48 hours. Unfortunately, it appears he has his sight set on her.

I love the strong female character that is Rachel. And I thoroughly enjoyed the influencer life as a subplot. But one of my favorite things about this series is that the books are formatted into a true crime podcast, so I strongly recommend listening to the audiobook (which has great narration, BTW) so that those parts don't get lost in translation.

Thank you to the author, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC and ALC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Rounded up from 3.5
Only hours after visiting Bailey, who is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering even if he is suspected to be a serial killer, Maddison, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following disappears. Rachel is called in by the FBI to help find Maddison and figure out if her disappearance is related to Bailey in any way, going undercover as an influencer.
This is a mystery/investigation, book 2 in the Rachel Krall Series (book 1 was The Night Swim). I preferred this one to the first book in the series, but it was not a home run. I have read a few of Megan Goldin books now, and I prefer her thrillers to her mysteries. My favorite so far wear The Escape Room and Stay Awake, two page turners that will both keep you at the edge of your seat from the first page. I did like to have an insight into the influencer's world.
I received an advance review copy of this book for free and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.

What a foursome… a social media influencer, a crime podcaster, a rideshare driver, and a prisoner.

Rachel Krall was called to an investigation in Florida because one of the inmates wanted to talk to her, and the FBI hoped Rachel would find out and then head home.

Rachel found out nothing, but she didn’t head home.

Rachel stayed and decided to do investigating on her own especially because the social media influencer Maddison disappeared.

Maddison was involved in this because the prisoner had talked to her a few days before Rachel was summoned.

What was that about?

And how did the rideshare driver fit into this?

DARK CORNERS is an edge-of-your-seat thriller for readers who enjoy pairing social media with crime investigation, gruesome scenes, and shady characters.

It is a good one and one you won’t want to miss. 5/5

This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

Rachel Krall Series #2

I was thrilled when I heard that Rachel Krall from The Night Swim would be back in book two.

This time she is on a mission to dig for information on a missing high profile influencer, Maddison. She visits Terence Bailey, who is in person and a suspected serial killer. He is also being released in a matter of days.

Rachel embarks on a risky little investigative journey on her own.

I was never fully engaged in the story and wasn't wanting to reach for it, which is a sign I couldn't connect or didn't care. I'm not a fan of the influencer vibes and this one was quite heavy on them. There were also a few turns that were overdone IMHO.

If you can suspend belief, enjoy police procedurals, interviews, and the social influencer angle, this may be one you would enjoy.

I really liked this book! The Night Swim was one of my favorite audiobooks I’ve listened to so I couldn’t wait to dive into this. I liked how this was written where we were mainly looking for a WHY not just a WHO. It was constantly making me wonder how all of these pieces of the puzzle would connect and I loved that.

I think my only complaint is the lack of the podcast in this. I LOVED that part of the previous book so I was looking forward to it but that’s really all I have to complain about.

The first Rachel Krall book, The Night Swim, was one of the first audiobooks I ever read and LOVED it.

This one was no different, with the podcast mixed in with the story plus the way the story is told is just so good that it sucks you in.

This was maybe better than the first book!! I loved the stories and how they intertwined and the ending was not what I expected at all!

Thanks to NetGalley, St Martin's Press and MacMillan Audio for advance copies!

I really enjoyed this sequel to Night Swim, but it also works as a standalone for those readers who haven't read the first Rachel Krall book. In Dark Corners, the FBI flies true crime podcaster Rachel to Florida to help them investigate the disappearance of a famous van-life influencer, Maddison Logan. Before Maddison disappeared, she met with inmate Terence Bailey, who is imprisoned for breaking and entering and is suspected in multiple murders. Rachel meets with Terence Bailey in prison to find out his connection to Maddison, and she also goes undercover at an influencer convention in Daytona to find out if any of Maddison's friends know what happened to her. Dark Corners is a slow-burn, complicated mystery that kept me entertained throughout--it was definitely a different plot from the usual missing person stories I've read. I also listened to part of it on audiobook, which was excellent and had the added bonus of bringing the podcast chapters to life with January Lavoy as the narrator. I hope there are more Rachel Krall mysteries in the future! Thank you to Netgalley, the author, St. Martin's Press, and Libro.fm for the librarian preview!

As with her last book, this one hooks the reader with an on trend story line. It got a bit convoluted with all the extra deaths/murders instead of focusing on the main story line but an enjoyable read.

I struggled with this book. There were a lot of characters to keep track of and it jumped around. It was hard to connect until things came together. By then I had lost interest. I did finish the book, but it wasn’t a page turner. This was the 2nd book in a series. I gave the 1st book 5*, this one was a disappointment for me, but I will try this author again. Thank you to net galley for an advanced readers copy.

Dark Corners was a great sequel to The Night Swim. However, it can be read as a standalone. Both books follow a true crime podcaster Rachel Krall, and they are two separate stories. During Dark Corners, Rachel attends BuzzCon as her running instagram profiler, and not as the podcaster so she can try and get details of a missing person. She ends up uncovering details that help the local police and FBI, that they wouldn’t have gotten without her on the inside. They work together to try and find the missing person, while solving a new murder and years old murders. One of the twists I predicted from early on, but I am glad was true. If it weren’t true, then it would have left too many unanswered questions at the end. Megan Goldin is a fantastic author and Dark Corners was a great page turner!

Quick, fast paced and short chapters. It’s not something that will stick with me but it was a fun read.

4 stars - This is the second book in the series and it revolved around a true crime podcaster Rachel Krall. This can be read as a standalone. I read the first book last year and I forgot what the book was about. Rachel is called to fly to Florida because of the disappearance of Maddison Logan, a social media influencer, who was last seen visiting a prison inmate. Although she is asked to return home, she decides to stay and help uncover the truth behind Maddison's disappearance. It took me a while to understand the story. The beginning was a little confusing but as I continued to read, the story picked up and I really enjoyed it. There were good twists and turns. The author also does a good job of depicting the power of social media.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion

Ill start this by saying I loved Megan Goldin's novel The Night Swim and was very excited about this next stand-alone installment.

Unlike some other reviews I’ve seen, I didn’t dislike Rachel’s character. I didn’t feel she was rude or snarky at all…?

However, this book on a whole fell flat for me. It felt disjointed. Things I loved about the first book weren’t the same — I missed the different POVs, the podcast transcripts, etc.

Also as a travel blogger, I found the bit about influencers laid on a bit too thick. Yea many of them suck but let’s not trash all of them for the way a few behave.

Also didn’t feel like the twists were that crazy. I dunno — just overall a miss for me.

When true-crime-podcaster Rachel Krall is summoned to Miami by the FBI, she isn’t sure what to expect. She soon learns that she has been mentioned in a conversation between convicted felon Terence Bailey and Maddison Logan, a social media influencer who was Bailey’s only visitor during his six-year prison term. Now Maddison has vanished and Bailey, who is suspected of committing multiple murders, is scheduled to be released in 48 hours. He also seems to be a little too interested in Rachel for her comfort.

Rachel decides to go undercover at BuzzCon, the influencer convention Maddison was attending before her disappearance. As the hours count down toward Bailey’s release, the body count rises. Rachel and the FBI must race to get to the bottom of the murders and find Maddison before Rachel becomes the next victim.

I really enjoyed Goldin’s last novel, Stay Awake, but I haven’t read any of her others, including the first book featuring Rachel Krall, The Night Swim. While obviously I can’t make any comparison between the two books in this series, I felt like Dark Corners worked fine as a stand-alone. My understanding is that Rachel’s podcast plays a much more prominent role in the first novel than this new one.

The different plot threads created a twisty plot that kept me guessing as I read. While I did figure out a lot about who had been involved in the various mysteries before it was revealed, I enjoyed following along as Goldin revealed how each of those situations came to be.

Overall, I liked the plot, but I was rather indifferent to the characters. Rachel and Martinez were fine, but not terribly interesting. While I like them together, their initial romantic encounter felt like it came out of nowhere. The majority of the influencers in the BuzzCon scenes were (purposely) unlikeable. Thinking back, my favorite characters were Maddison and Terence, both of whom received very little time on the page.

Give this one a try if you’re into conventions, twisty plots, or true-crime podcasts.

"Rachel Krall, the true crime podcaster star of Megan Goldin's acclaimed The Night Swim, returns to search for a popular influencer who disappears after visiting a suspected serial killer.

Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his release date approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following. Hours later, Maddison disappears, and police suspect she's been kidnapped - or worse. Is Maddison's disappearance connected to her visit to Bailey? And why was she visiting him in the first place?

When they hit a wall in the investigation, the FBI reluctantly asks for Rachel Krall's help in finding the missing influencer. Maddison seems to only exist on social media; she has no family, no friends, and other than in her posts, most people have never seen her. Who is she, really? Using a fake Instagram account, Rachel goes undercover to BuzzCon, a popular influencer conference, where she discovers a world of fierce rivalry that may have turned lethal.

When police find the body of a woman with a tattoo of a snake eating its tail - identical to a tattoo Rachel had seen on Bailey's hand - the FBI must consider a chilling possibility: Bailey has an accomplice on the outside and a dangerous obsession with influencers, including Rachel Krall herself. Suddenly the target of a monster hiding in plain sight, Rachel is forced to confront the very real dangers that lurk in the dark corners of the internet."

Maybe Maddison Logan is nothing more than bait for Rachel Krall?

In a sequel to The Night Swim, podcaster Rachel Krall returns to assist the FBI in investigating a case. Popular true crime podcaster Maddison Logan interviewed soon-to-be released serial killer Terence Bailey in prison and then disappeared. But Maddison Logan seems to only exist online. Going undercover at a popular influencer convention, Rachel discovers a fierce world of competitors and suspects that Bailey might have an accomplice on the outside.

While I loved The Night Swim, I didn't feel like it needed a sequel. And I was wrong. Switching the series from a legal thriller to more of a detective mystery, Dark Corners can easily be read as a standalone novel. Early on, Goldin dedicates chapters to the serial killer's perspective, so you already know he's guilty. Instead, you are left trying to figure out how it all connects and hoping Rachel and Special Agent Martinez will solve it before it's too late. Given the electricity between Rachel and the hot FBI Agent, I could easily see more Rachel Krall books coming in the future.

The dust has barely settled since the events of The Night Swim and Rachel Krall is already heading off to Florida. This time, the FBI called her in to get information to find a missing influencer after she visited a suspected serial killer in prison.

Maddison Logan is a #vanlife influencer who visited Terence Bailey in prison. Terence is suspected of killing several women, and his release date is rapidly approaching. Soon after Maddison visits Terence, she disappears. The FBI suspects the events are connected, so they bring in Rachel Krall. Terence keeps asking for her because her podcast has helped innocent people walk free.

Then, the police find a woman's body with a tattoo of a snake eating its tail, and it looks just like the one on Bailey's hand. How are the two connected? Rachel decides to go undercover at BuzzCon, an influencer convention nearby, to uncover the secrets behind Maddison's disappearance and learn more about the cutthroat world of influencing.

Dark Corners is an excellent follow-up to The Night Swim, though I think the podcast elements were slightly weaker than in the first book. I'll gladly pick up another book in this series if Megan Goldin chooses to write it.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Another great book from Megan Goldin. You can always count on her for good story. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

I actually didn’t realize this was a follow up to The Night Swim, but once I realized I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed The Night Swim and Dark Corners delivered just the same. I enjoyed how the mystery unfolded and thought the world of Social Media was depicted well. I loved the how this book is a follow up to The Night Swim but could easily be read as a stand alone.
A fun summer read and one I will be recommending to others.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read if you like:
- dual POV
- dual timelines
- CSI

I absolutely LOVE Megan Goldin and loved the first in the series, so I couldn’t wait to get into this one finally 🩷🩷
This book is about a social media influencer who goes missing one day, and they are pretty sure that a notorious serial killer, Terence Bailey got to her … or did he?
This was definitely a sloooow burn until about halfway through, and then I was totally hooked and couldn’t stop reading!
This book felt a lot like an episode of CSI, and I absolutely love CSI! The forensics, the trail of clues they were following, the medical examination… I really really liked it.
I cannot wait to read more in this series, and more by Megan Goldin!