This book started out fairly spooky. But the narrative shifts abruptly. We leave the realm of the supernatural for a more sci-fi oriented plot. The pacing is uneven and events don't always make much sense. With characters that aren't complex enough to drive the plot I have to call this one a hard pass.

A dark mix of Coraline and Doctor Who, THE DARK PLACE appeals to sci-fi, horror, and young adult fiction fans as a whole. Lewis has crafted a mysterious and thrilling world, and a young romance top it all of. Truly a book you won't want to miss!

I love everything about the dark place! Currently taking a drive into Britney Lewis Backlog. 5 stars it was an easy and fun read. Also found myself laughing and scared at the same time,

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney Publishing Worldwide, Disney Hyperion for an eCopy of The Dark Place!

When I first read The Undead Truth of Us All, I was absolutely stunned by how good it was. And The Dark Place lives up to absolutely all my expectations. Perfectly eerie and haunting, heart clenchingly romantic, The Dark Place is the perfect blend of romance and horror. Britney S. Lewis writes her stories in the best kind of way and she really excels at blending fiction with lessons on how to deal with the darkest parts of ourselves.

Anytime I get to read a book that is laced with magical realism, speculative fiction, and YA fantasy I'm grabbing it up because these types of books heal the inner child in me. I am so grateful for books like this because growing up, I did not have novels with characters that look like me that was a part of this magical, beautiful world, that I absolutely love. This is a phenomenal read!! Please add this one to your reads !!

This was such an atmospheric read that my older students would enjoy. It is spooky, haunting, and interesting. I enjoyed the characters and much of the pacing.

Britney S. Lewis strikes again with a work that is cringe and yet delightful. There is something about her stories that make you go aawwhh and aaahhh simultaneously and its never questioned. I don't know the film inspiration for the tale but whatever the characters motivation for love was not missed. Britney is for sure an auto-buy,no questions, author for me.

Britney Lewis is officially on my list as an auto-buy author. This book is so good????? I was hooked from the very first page. The concept of this is so intriguing and the plot is initially what piqued my interest, but then as we got further into this, it really kept getting better. The Jordan Peele comp is so warranted. Throughout Hylee's journey, I was getting this awful sense of dread that I also get during literally all of Jordan Peele's movies. This definitely was giving Us and I loved it. And if you want a book that will mess with your head and send you into a mini existential crisis, look no further!

As Augie says about cola in Role Models: I like the idea of this more than I actually like it. The story sounded like a dark, twisty mystery, and it was in parts. But I feel like the actual Dark Place Hylee visits and her abilities could have been explained better. I also think her family seemed to be over dramatic about things, to the point where I was like, would this genuinely be an issue or did the author just need to insert rifts? Everyone seemed to have communication avoidance, which I can understand sometimes, but not to that extent. I wish things had been fleshed out more instead of a lot of the story focusing on Hylee and Elat’s romance.

At the start, the book takes its sweet time to rev up, but once things get going, you're hooked, no doubt. And whoa, the author's got this knack for serving up the creeps and suspense. I gotta admit, those descriptions of the creatures in that other dimension? Nightmare material right there.

Let me toss out some things I dug about the book:

👲Characters? Legit, felt I knew 'em.
🏫The places? Described so vividly.
😨That suspense factor? Nailed it.

But hey, it's not all rainbows and butterflies:

🥱Starting? Bit sluggish. Could've used more oomph.
⚔️Some actions? Kinda made me go, "Would anyone really do that?"
😨And then, bam, the author leaves us hanging about the whole deal with that freaky "other" place Hylee and her borther got sucked into.

😏Bottom line? "The Dark Place" is a winner in the horror department. Seriously well-written and a heck of a ride. If you're into stuff like Netflix's "Stranger Things" or "The Haunting of Hill House," this book's right up your alley.

Thank you @britney.s.lewis, #disneyhyperionbooks #netgalley
, and @turnthepagetours for the eBook and my honest review.

I thought this book was excellently crafted. It leans a bit scifi/cosmic horror/magic realism. I think if you are reading this for straight general horror you may be a little disappointed as it is quite a genre bender but I think it squarely fits in cosmic horror. The MC's situation is written with a lot of emotional depth, and as a YA it isn't overly gratuitous in the violence and horrors.

As with her first book Britney's mastery of prose and her writing style really draw the reader into the book.

Such a fun read!
***spoilers***
Coraline meets the multiverse of madness meets the time travelers wife.
This was surprisingly a sweet love story intertwined with a twisty enthralling mystery. loved getting to know Hylee and her fantastic story.
If you are a fan of thrillers, YA, and Coraline this is a must read.

YA, horror/thriller, magical realism, time travel, grief and self-discovery
When Hylee disappears and materialises in a dark, distorted version of her old family home on the night her brother went missing, she realises this moment could be the key to unveiling what really happened all those years ago. Before she can investigate further, she is pulled from the dark place back to our world. Her parents, unable to look at her the same after her disappearance, send Hylee to stay with her grandmommy, and neither her family nor her once-best friend will speak to her about her disappearance. Meeting Eilam at a party, a handsome boy who seems inexplicably familiar appears to signal a return to some sense of normality until she disappears in front of him. But unlike everyone else in Hylee’s life, Eilam listens to her, and together, they investigate the truth about time, space, and reality itself. As they dive deeper into time travel, Hylee realises that darkness isn’t confined to the dark place; it is pervasive, all-encompassing, and slowly draining her dry.

It’s hard to explain just how beautifully unsettling this book is. The Dark Place covers the devastating loss of a sibling, processing grief, the experience of Black culture as defined by its loss of ancestral history, and how complex childhood trauma affects every aspect of a person’s being.
Britney’s writing is poetic and magical. The way she uses words and literary devices to describe the dark place creates this sense of unnatural life, where it is so twisted that its very existence is an affront to the nature of life itself. There are a ridiculous amount of quotes from the book I could cite here as an example of this and one of my favourites is, “The darkness wrapped itself around me like a tourniquet, pressing into me until I felt my heartbeat throbbing against my neck.” This doesn’t just create the perfect unsettled feeling I want when I’m reading this type of horror but also paints an amazingly accurate and complex depiction of a child’s experience of trauma.

As a psychology student, I loved how Britney portrayed Hylee’s experience of trauma. The issues that we see Hylee struggling with (particularly with relationships and her sense of self) are typical of survivors of this type of trauma. The specific points that Hylee remembers from what happened and how she describes them, anthropomorphising her surroundings and being unable to remember much of what happened, felt so real to me. That sense of reality immersed me in the story, making me connect to and understand Hylee, her thoughts, feelings, and choices. Her journey of self-discovery and process of healing from her trauma through having to experience the ‘dark place’ shows us how it’s not possible for any of us to truly progress in our own self-discovery or healing journey without accepting our own dark places and experiencing them knowing we have loved ones waiting on either side for us to make it through.

I have seen some reviews expressing that it didn’t make sense that none of Hylee’s family members supported her or would talk to her about both her brother going missing and her disappearing, but once again, I think Britney did an excellent job of showing that dealing with grief and the way that affects familial relationships can look vastly different depending on a whole host of factors. Given what each family member had been through, the systematic culture of silence around Black issues in America, the family’s socioeconomic status, generational differences, and the inherent intergenerational trauma of growing up Black in America, it made sense to me that each family member reacted as they did. In this, Britney has shown just how much our individual and communal experiences shape how we view tragedies/trauma and how we respond to them, amongst other complex points, whilst still remaining firmly in the YA fiction genre, and that’s no easy feat. I will clarify here, though, that social issues and their effects on people’s behaviour are something I am studying, so I am aware that this was perhaps not as clear to other readers (especially those of the target demographic) and so should have been made more explicit. Bryanna Bond’s review of The Dark Place on Goodreads discusses this in terms of Black families and their response to trauma, and I would recommend reading that.

Finally, in terms of the exploration of time travel in The Dark Place, I enjoyed the depiction of the Butterfly Effect, how seemingly little things can shape and alter the future in significant ways, and also how big things like trauma and tragedies affect every aspect of people and the world down to seemingly little things. I haven’t seen this specific approach to time travel before (inherited ability and the ‘dark place’ concept) and appreciated the unique spin Britney has on it.
Although I understand that this is a YA book and we learn about the system of time travel through what Eilam has learned from his grandfather, I would’ve loved to understand more about the nature of time travelling in this universe and how that ability could be inherited genetically. Partly due to this lack of explanation of the time travel system, I felt Eilam and Hylee’s relationship and connection felt a little rushed, which did take me out of the immersion a bit towards the end.

Overall, I loved this book and would recommend it to others looking for an unsettling YA horror/magical realism type read. It definitely isn’t quite the same, but the feelings this inspired in me reminded me of watching the Fear Street trilogy, and they are some of my all-time favourite films. Britney’s writing creates such a vivid and tense picture, and the depiction of complex childhood trauma and how that affected Hylee made me feel so deeply understood. I will definitely be reading Britney’s first work and eagerly anticipating whatever she creates next!
Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for the Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I normally don’t read YA books but as always Britney’s writing was top tier . The horror elements are just right and I was so emotional reading this story .

Thank you NetGalley for the eArc

I absolutely love Britney Lewis's work, and her ability to make me cry and feel unsettled at the same time. Like all the things that in any other contemporary novel, the MC's situation would make me sad. But in a Lewis, it also makes me feel off-kilter. I'm patiently waiting for the purchasable audiobook.

I did not expect to get so emotional over a YA horror novel, but here we are! The Dark Place is a story of grief, the pain of reliving your worst memories, and finding love in the most unexpected times. I adored this book, despite the ending feeling a bit rushed. I would still highly recommend it!

Judging a book by its cover absolutely exists and I picked this up solely for the cover—it's stunning! I wasn't expecting the sci-fi elements and wished for more horror, but I loved the romance and the sibling relationship. Lewis's plot and prose are immersive and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

This is the sophomore novel I was hoping for from the author, and it was fun to read. I wouldn’t call it YA horror; it is more like a low-grade creepy YA story with magical realism elements. I had expected this after her first book and was in the mood for this setting, but if you go in thinking it will be true horror you may be disappointed.

I loved the way the main character was still navigating YA friendships and romance, along with family dynamics. The story was a bit slow at first, but once I got about 20% in, I was invested. All in, a solid read and I’ll be interested in anything else the author comes out with.

Thank you to Disney Hyperion and NetGalley for this complimentary book – I appreciate you!

A emotional, immersive read that falls into the sci-fi/comsic genre. This is a YA book.

I love the MC and love the world building that this author does with her novels. I also love the tone and setting of the book. It adds to the dark vibe.

It would be cool to see her write more adult characters as well because she does an excellent job with the plot. It’s long and fleshed out but not boring.

This is my first read by Britney S. Lewis and I’m definitely intrigued to read more of her work.

"The Dark Place" by Britney S. Lewis is a gripping tale of mystery and suspense that immerses readers in a world of secrets, intrigue, and the chilling atmosphere of a psychological thriller. This novel is a compelling blend of tension, twists, and the complexities of human psychology.

Lewis' writing style is atmospheric and suspenseful, creating a sense of unease that keeps the reader engaged from start to finish. The characters in the novel are intricately developed, each with their own hidden motives and fears that contribute to the depth of the narrative.

At the heart of the story is a suspenseful exploration of memory, trauma, and the blurred lines between reality and imagination. The author skillfully weaves together elements of mystery and psychological suspense, creating a narrative that keeps the reader guessing and second-guessing.

"The Dark Place" successfully balances the psychological aspects of the story with the fast-paced plot, resulting in a narrative that is both immersive and heart-pounding. The themes of identity, manipulation, and the consequences of past actions add complexity to the plot.

In conclusion, "The Dark Place" is a masterfully crafted psychological thriller that offers a roller-coaster ride of suspense and tension. If you're looking for a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat with its twists and turns, this novel provides a gripping and thrilling narrative that will leave you captivated and intrigued.