Ok Blaine Daigle, you officially have my attention! This is my second novel by this author and I’m at the point where I’ll read anything he releases. The concept of A Dark Roux is so original, I had No clue where it was going or how it would end which is my favorite kind of story. It has so many layers to it, sibling love and loyalty is at its heart. However there’s an ultimate creep factor with the seemingly haunted house and the fact the main characters mom may (or may not) be a witch. Overall absolutely enjoyed this wild ride and highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Making a book into a movie is something I tend to be very sceptic about and seldom do I find myself wishing that upon any work of literature. I find "The Dark Roux" to be an exception though - I'd love to see this one given a generous budget and then transformed into a movie.

Do not misunderstand me, I loved reading it! It is just that I'd love to scenes painted with words come to life. There is so much in this work that feels more like an everchanging painting, and I can almost hear the eerie music, than it is just a regular book.

At first, I must admit, I struggled a bit with just that. I sighed at what felt like too long descriptions of what the place looked like, noises, "background stuff". Soon though I had fallen for its allure and can only hope to find something similar again as I'd love to repeat the reading experience I've just had.

As for the main characters, Rhiannon and Rhett, I liked them well enough. I felt for their mother at the end - what parent does not want the best for their child, fearing oh so much to fail at the end? It must have been the worst of hells for her!

Other than that, the characters were kinda flat. I do find myself wondering what became of the child that was introduced in the beginning with Rhiannon - but he was just a sidestory, never meant to be part of the story. Still, I would have liked to know...

Even though the characters lacked a certain depth, I did not mind. This was not about the depth or growth of individuals, it was more about humanity and the nature of human cruelty, revenge, forgiveness, regret... The depth was created through generations, through history, not in just two beings.

An eerie, beautiful piece of art, painted with words. 5 stars.

Big thanks to Wicked House Publishing, Netgalley and Blaine Daigle for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I read The Broken Places and absolutely loved it so I was very excited for the chance to read this before it was released. I've lived in Louisiana all my life but on the southwest side so this was awesome! The writing is great and I felt like I was there watching everything go down as it happened.

Do yourself a favor and check this out when it releases in November!

Dark atmospheric. It was engaging to witness the story unfold and the truths to come to light. I have some issues with the exposition that revealed the ultimate truth at the end but overall, a well deserved spot in the mysteries of the bayou. It's always refreshing to read folk horror.

All monsters must be defeated, even when they wear familiar faces.

Thanks to Netgallery for sharing a copy of this with me.

The Louisiana bayou sets the stage for this atmospheric, creepy, and spooky book. Blaine Daigle came on my radar when I read The Broken Places and I could not wait to read this book. The author is from Louisiana so it makes sense he would choose to use this as a setting for his book. What a book it is! It is dark, chilling, riveting and hard to put down!

When Rhiannon LeBeau left her ancestorial home as a teen, she thought she would never go back. When her brother, Rhett contacts to inform her that their mother has died, they return to their crumbling home surrounded by sugarcane fields in Terrebonne Parish. There they will come face to face with a past that has not forgotten, to a past that has waited a long time for them to return, a past that wants to collect on a debt.

This was a well written and atmospheric read. I loved the vivid descriptions of their family home and the bayou. I felt as if I were there as a silent observer. There is an undercurrent of dread flowing throughout the book. As the book progresses, there is also a sense of danger. I enjoyed how legacy played a part in this book. The haunted feel of the bayou and house seeps through the pages and has a chilling effect.

If you have not read a book by Blaine Daigle, I encourage you to do so.

Well written, atmospheric, chilling, and dark.

Another enjoyable book by Daigle. I can't wait to read what he writes next.

One of the best books I've read all year!

This book delivers everything I love in an excellent horror book. The setting in the Louisiana cane fields was perfect and added so much atmosphere to the story.

The characters are well developed and seeing them struggle as the past comes back to haunt them felt so real.

And what an ending this book has!

Highly recommend this one to horror/thriller fans.

Brusque, affected, vague.

Our MCs are siblings that experienced a series of family tragedies as kids. Both are impacted in different ways and have varying levels of forgiveness and tolerance for the past.
🇺🇸 Set in the summer in small town, Louisiana, on a sugar cane plantation in 1999 and 2014

🐺Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags🐕
🙄 I find multiple timelines are best when we are getting a bit fatigued in one timeline or to show what happened rather than tell. For this story it felt fragmented and frustrating. We would be in the middle of getting a reveal in 2014 and suddenly we are back in 1999 on a hot day playing with toys so we can remember a dream child-Rhiannon thinks she had.

🫠 The writing style is melodramatic in a way that made it read monotone for me. Everything from shopping to walking around the house to basic problem solving was written in a way that connected it back to the same events over and over. It’s like there’s one witchy scene that will be recalled with long monologue. One abuse/abandonment scene. A select few dream sequences done in slightly different ways. It felt like a highly repetitive ‘no plot just vibes” story paired with all tell no show. Kind of like, “it’s scary because the MC said so and they were scared, so you should be too” style.

😴 At the 40% mark it felt like the same story I read at the 10% mark. Our MCs give us paragraphs of repetitive musings so by 50% we are still just reading how Rhiannon thinks something is ominous, someone has changed but she can’t put her finger on how, or she has a dream and it felt SO real and it must be related to a real memory but she can’t remember anything. As the story progressed I felt increasingly left out of the narrative and lost interest. It probably would have been better in a short story or novella format.

🫥 The suspense is driven by omission (“if only ___ knew”), baiting (“I found something that could reveal all” ~sets aside~), telling (“we have a family secret where something terrible happened and I’ll never forget it” ~says nothing more~), dream sequences (so many), and contrived situations. This has that trope where seemingly normal people stay in a haunted house while crazy dangerous things are happening to them even though they could leave. The reason for Rhiannon staying was weak to me because she could have accomplished what she needed to without staying at the house and she wasn't resource limited.

🤔 On the plus side, I think this is a good beginners horror, especially for young readers or if you take long breaks while reading, and it touched on themes of family trauma and racial prejudice in a way that didn’t seem problematic, gratuitous, or diluted.

Mood Reading Match Up:
-Things that go bump in the night mystery
-Siblings having each others backs quest
-Southern creepy house and witchy folklore family vibes
-Go-with-the-flow haunted house trope

Content Heads-Up: Suicide. Death of loved ones. Abandonment. Child abuse and neglect. Racism (historical persecution and prejudice).

Wow. Okay. So, I picked up The Broken Places a few months ago, and it's by far my favorite read of the year. When I saw an opportunity to read and review Blaine's next work, I was super excited. Long story short: he did not disappoint.

Both Rhiannon and Rhett were such great, relatable characters. There are secrets being kept, especially by Rhett, and for awhile I felt annoyed thinking, "If this is one of those cases where everything could be solved by communication..." But you realize later WHY these secrets were secrets, and it makes total sense, and it's heartbreaking.

One of the things I loved about TBP was the atmosphere, and Blaine nailed it again here. I've never been to Louisiana, but reading his descriptions of the bayou and the heat and the smells, I feel like I have. It was haunting and eerie, viewed through the eyes of characters who know this place as 'home' and see both the ugliness and the beauty beneath it.

A Dark Roux's whole plot unravels beautifully, with pieces of the puzzle coming together a little at a time until it forms an entire picture. The Lebeau property isn't as secluded as the cabin in The Broken Places, but it FEELS like it is, because of how isolated Rhett and Rhi are from the town's inhabitants. It never felt like help was right around the corner if they needed it. These siblings were on their own, and had only each other to turn to.

Haunting, heartbreaking, beautiful, creepy... This book was everything I hoped it would be and has solidified Blaine as one of my insta-read authors.

A DARK ROUX by Blain Daigle

My thanks to NetGalley and Wicked House Publishing.

Rhiannon and Rhett LeBeau are haunted. This being a horror book, the haunting is of course literal, but figurative as well. Having grown up on a sugarcane plantation in Louisiana, they return home after the death of their estranged mother to see to the disposal of their mother’s remains as well as the house they lived in as children, the house in which their father committed suicide, and the house they’ve now inherited. As they tend to the grim duties of surviving children, it becomes apparent that a forgotten mystery from their childhood, a forgotten bargain, has come back to claim what it is owed. Will the siblings be able to escape what’s haunting and hunting them? Or will a final price be paid to satisfy a transaction come due?
This is my first encounter with Blaine Daigle’s work, and I am impressed; he’s certainly gained a reader here. The story is engaging and draws your interest. His language is economical, but in no way sparse – he conveys what he means to convey in just as many words as it takes to convey it, no more and no less. He builds his moods well, setting the scene and crafting his spooks and creeps with care. This is by no means a barn-burner of a book, at least not at first, and I don’t think any ghost story worth its salt should be. A good ghost story builds, takes its time, adding ingredients one at a time like you would build a stew (or more appropriately here, a gumbo), and only after the previous ingredients have had a chance to cook a bit and flavor the sauce. This book requires your patience; this is the South, after all – things move slower here.
The setting is appropriately mysterious and unsettling, as the bayou tends to be for people such as myself who have never lived there (I wonder if the same holds true for the people who do). Bringing Louisiana to life, the predominant atmosphere in this book is HUMID. Every page drips in the oppressive heat and dank humidity of the swamps; at no moment are we allowed to forget we are in the Deep South. There are constant references in the book to moss hanging from trees, the heat and humidity (people sweat A LOT in this story), and oceans of sweet tea are consumed by various characters. There is a pervasive sense of never being able to get quite clean, a humidity that coats you in fresh sweat the second you step out of the shower (anyone who’s endured a hot and humid Southern summer with no a/c will know exactly what I mean).
Personally, the bayou seems to me a place almost forgotten by time; a place full of mystery and darkness, a shifting place where the surroundings can literally swallow you whole, never leaving a trace. To my mind, the bayou is one of the last remaining places of true mystery and magic in this country, as close as we get here in the US to the faerie rings and enchanted glens of Ye Olde England: beautiful and alluring but not without its dangers and secrets better left undisturbed; bargains better left undiscussed and unsealed. There’s a reason Robert Johnson got famous singing about Hellhounds on his trail. In other words, a perfect setting for a tale of spooks and monsters and creatures made of nightmares.
As I read through the story, I kept feeling parallels to Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House, in that the family home seemed to be just as much a character in the story as Rhiannon, Rhett, and the rest of the characters we encounter. Something indeed walks in the LeBeau House, but it doesn’t necessarily walk alone.
And speaking of characters, they are certainly one of the strengths of the book. They’re well written, believable, and seem to fully inhabit the setting they find themselves in. As new characters are introduced, we take our time getting to know our players as they are added into the mix rather than a rushed intro and a quick bit of action to illustrate their role in the story. Rhiannon is strong, strong-willed, and conflicted about her anger and resentment toward the mother she views as abandoning her children. Rhett is the softer of the pair, more introverted and quiet, seemingly weak but hiding a strength and determination just under the surface. The supporting cast is present and there to help bring the story to life, but they are not intrusive. There’s no wacky, one-liner slinging BFF here for comic relief (thankfully). Kindra in particular provides a bright spot in a dark story, but at no point do the characters seem “stock” or out of place. The characters may be typical, but I wouldn’t say cliched. About the biggest cliché I can quibble about is the family name LeBeau – it seems every book set in Louisiana has a LeBeau in it, as well as a Beauchamp.
Blending Cajun folklore and cryptozoology, voodoo, and traditional haunted house tropes into an entertaining, immersive, and just plain enjoyable spook yarn, Blaine Daigle has gotten my attention. The book is not without its flaws (the Ferryman scene seemed like a bit of an expository info dump, out of place in his otherwise well-crafted tale), it nonetheless overcomes its minor missteps to come out strong, delivering some genuinely creepy and unnerving moments, as well as a twist or two. I recommend it for fans of Jackson’s aforementioned Hill House, ghost stories, haunted houses, creepy creatures, and Southern Gothic. Thumbs up.

I finished this book in 1 sitting. A well written short & easy horror read. It's a story is about forefather's past sin ( that's common among landed gentry in The South ) visited upon the family. I liked how the author incorporated supernatural element between present & past.

I think Blaine Daigle (Author) has just found himself a new fan! A Dark Roux was everything I needed to read without actually knowing it at the beginning. I love a story with diversity and that's exactly what I got.

Here we have a story of family, loss, pain and suffering. We have a tale of horror, folklore and myths. I adore reading books in the Bayou. It's on my bucket list of places I want to visit in my life time (I don't think anything compares to it here in the UK). The feel of traditions and magic has always excited me. So this book really did tick every box for me. I was swept into the lives of Rhi and Brett. From that terrible night in their childhoods to a time in the present returning to the house that was once their home. I enjoyed meeting them as children, but loved the people they become. I felt so much pain for everything they went through from the persecution of the people of their town. As a mother I understood far more come the end. That ending was perfect, but the epilogue.... Just wow. My heart literally was feeling everything.

It's so hard to write a review without a single spoiler and I'm trying to give you just that. A Dark Roux is a unique horror in that it covers a few genres. Yes its preliminary horror, but this should appeal to many others too. I read this in under 18 hours in 2 sittings! I am now racing off to get a copy of Blaine's first book, The Broken Place as I cannot fault his writing style. This was a solid 4.5 star read and I rarely give books something that high!

Thank you to Wicked House Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange of an honest review.

The premise is simple enough: a death in the family draws remaining members back to a house that turns out to be haunted. We have a lot of familiar elements, such as voodoo, mysterious deaths, family curses, monsters, and ghosts.

I have limited exposure to horror books, despite being quite well-versed in horror films and shows. However, this has been a year of exploring new books and genres, which has generally worked in my favour, thus far.

***********A Dark Roux*********** is one such happy discovery.

Though I wouldn’t say it scared me, the book is certainly creepy enough, set in a haunted house on a Louisiana bayou surrounded by sugarcane fields. A feeling of dread grows steadily as the book progresses, flashing back and forth between the present day and the characters’ childhood, with crucial information being revealed bit by bit.

The story is told through the perspectives of Rhiannon and Rhett, which ends up being quite clever, as both siblings have secrets they try to keep from the other. I have a soft spot for strong sibling relationships, so I loved this aspect of the book. Rhiannon and Rhett’s love for each other comes through on every page. Their secrets are kept in order to protect the other, and this is revealed gradually through their alternating perspectives.

As the secrets came to light, my jaw kept dropping at each twist.

I also have a deep appreciation for lyrical prose, and this book delivered. The imagery, the descriptions—the author wove for me vivid pictures that made me feel as though I was in the bayou with the Rhiannon and Rhett, feeling the muggy heat, hearing the sound of wind through the sugarcanes. The writing is beautiful and haunting.

What I didn’t enjoy so much was the pacing, as the book started to drag somewhere in the middle before picking up and racing to the end. Maybe the author intended it that way, but it didn’t work for me. It ended up being a long info-dump at the end which took away from the urgency of the climax. Some of that information could have been spread out better.

If you’re looking for a truly scary read, this is not the book for you. However, if you want to be absorbed in atmospheric storytelling with flawed yet lovable characters, I recommend reading this. It’s absolutely perfect for autumn reading.

I loved the premise of this book, but the writing just didn't work for me. It also had some timeline inconsistencies that I hope a copyeditor will catch before the book goes to print.

"There is a place deep in the heart of Louisiana where the darkness of the bayou echoes with the songs of alligators and bullfrogs, their voices captured in the hanging mosses, never to escape - never to be heard by the world beyond the wetlands. A place where black water boils within the thick veins of nature under the heat of the Louisiana moon."

This novel is full of immersive imagery that will capture the reader, much like the bayou captures the book's characters.

Don't be lulled into a sense of comfort. This book is dark and deep and dangerous. Perfect for October witchy season. Remember the Poe classic "Fall of the House of Usher"? This story is like that, but amped up to terror level 10. Oh, and a surprise visit with the Ferryman (my favorite character).

"Beneath the black waters of the Louisiana bayou hides a world of dark mysticism. A world steeped in superstition and the decay of family legacies. A world Rhiannon LeBeau thought she'd left behind fifteen years ago after a summer of tragedy and horror.

But following the death of their mother, Rhiannon and her younger brother Rhett find themselves drawn back to their crumbling ancestral home deep in the sugarcane farms of Terrebonne Parish. A place full of family secrets and lost memories that will force both siblings to come face to face with the demons of their past...and present.

Because something has been waiting for their return. Something with a long memory and a debt to collect. Something tied to the bayou in blood. Something that intends to make sure Rhiannon and Rhett never leave again."

The dark magics of the Louisiana bayou always gets me.

This book had a lot going for it but I found that it fell flat. The cover design is a winner and I was interested to read about Southern folklore. Much of the novel was a slow pace which is not necessarily a bad thing but I admit slow-burn books are generally not my favorite. The book felt longer than it needed to be at times due to flowery language yet there were important topics that actually needed more detailed and contextual information. Unfortunately I felt that the Southern folklore was only just skimmed upon or poorly described and left plot holes. Sadly I found the final "showdown" between the main character and the antagonist to be very anticlimactic and left me thinking "that was it?" I had high hopes but this one wasn't for me.

My thanks to Wicked House Publishing, Blaine Daigle and Netgalley.
Well, Mr. Blaine Daigle has found a new reader. I've been fortunate to have somehow managed to read Mr. Daigles last two arcs, and no lies...he's kinda the bomb diggity!
This was less blood thirsty than the other, still great!
Also, yes I do know the difference between light and dark roux. Please..my shrimp and sausage jambalaya is to die for!😋
Everybody who adores horror should be reading this author.

I love it! After reading The Broken Places by Mr Daigle, I was anxiously awaiting the new book and he did not disappoint! His writing is so incredibly stylistic and realistic and it makes me visually picture the creepiness of the bayou in my mind even though its been 10 years since I've been in Louisiana. The characters are well thought out and described to perfection, from looks to personality.. The eerie bone-numbing horror keeps you on your toes, and I constantly picked my kindle up any time I had a few free minutes to read a little more. I'm a huge fan of the author and his style of writing, and I cannot wait for more!

A Dark Roux was a mystery filled with supernatural horrors and family trauma and I absolutely loved it. It focuses on the two main characters Rhiannon and Rhett as they arrive at their family home for their estranged mother's funeral. Rhiannon has a more bitter attitude towards her childhood than Rhett which causes some rifts between the siblings but I loved their storyline and how they work together. I also love how the author uses flashbacks throughout the book, I feel like it makes the story even more powerful and some of the most creepy parts happen from the siblings pasts. I also loved the Louisiana bayou setting and the plantation house with its horrific past, as well as the creepy old River Church that lies in ruins deep within the bayou. The imagery in this book sent chills down my spine at its creepiest moments and I also loved the folk incorporation of the Rougarou as well as the incorporation of voodoo. Let me just say...images of bones floating in the bayou, eerie! Overall this was a really creepy, atmospheric well written book and fans of horror are absolutely going to soak it up. Especially if you like stories that are set deep within the bayou. This was truly a gothic horror read and I loved it.

Just finished reading an advanced copy of "A Dark Roux" by Blaine Daigle and it was such a relief to read a good folk horror novel after a long dry spell. Evocative, creepy, and atmospheric, filled with the dark magic of the bayou.

I haven't gotten into many books lately, but this one really had me scurrying into my blankets with excitement each night, ready to read more about witches and swamps and dark family secrets.

It was a big step up from Daigle's debut novel as well, I noticed the characters felt much more rounded, compelling, and animated this time.

Character development was my biggest criticism of his other work that I've read, and this time it was his greatest strength.

If you like horror novels that are more creepy atmosphere than gory violence, and enjoy lyrical writing with a poetic turn of phrase, this is for you.