
Member Reviews

Expertly crafted. Fans of Crawdad and To Kill a Mockingbird can appreciate this mystery/southern gothic. I will be living with these characters for a while. Saint and Patch will be names I will not soon forget like Dill and Jean Louise...or even McCarthy's John Grady Cole.

Wow! What a wonderful book and is deserving of all of the pre-publishing hype! A book that makes you think hard at every twist and turn. Courage, love, trauma, love are all themes that weave their way throw all of the characters. Don’t wait, read this book now. It will have you reflecting for months to come.

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I would like to thank NetGalley and Crown for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on June 25, 2024.
This is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I will read it again.
“I wonder what exactly a mistake is. A thing we should not have done, right? But if learning is built on trial and error there can be no mistakes, only rungs on a ladder to someplace better.”
— Chris Whitaker, All the Colors of the Dark

This book has a lot of everything: a love story, a mystery, a serial killer, a missing person and much more. The daughter of a wealthy family goes missing and Patch, a local boy, save the girl. To say more would be a spoiler and I won't do that. Just get the book and read it to find out what happens.

I cant say that I love this book as much as We Begin at the End, but Whitaker really knows how to write a compelling story. A deep character study on best friends Patch and Saint, following their lives through heartbreak after heartbreak. I loved the ending, but the story got lost for me a little in the middle, and it was so long. I rarely give any book 5 stars, but this was a solid 3.75 for me. Thank you to netgalley for this ARC.

An epic coming of age story that subverts expectations at every turn. Whitaker’s characters jump off the page and truly leave a lasting impression. I will recommend this novel often!

I'll admit it took me a bit to get into this, because I wasn't sure exactly what to expect with it and hadn't read anything by Whitaker before. I'm very happy to have persisted because WOW, this ended up being stunning - one of my favorite recent books in memory. It's marketed as a bit of a thriller/mystery type of book, and while I do see that and agree with it, it's also got SO MUCH MORE - truly genre defying, this would make an incredible movie or limited TV series on Netflix, etc. Definitely going to want to read this again.

Just like Whitaker’s We Begin at the End, All The Colors of the Dark is an absolute masterpiece. It’s everything you want a book to be, offering hope, redemption, and the best kind of storytelling. This was my favorite book of 2024. I can’t wait to see what Chris Whitaker writes next.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

All the stars - highly recommend!!
This was a favorite of mine - the writing is absolutely incredible and the characters are amazing.
I will read anything Chris Whitaker writes!

ATCD is a mystery/thriller but it is so much more! This is not your typical page turning novel, but a genre spanning slow burn novel with a mystery in the center.
The characters are well developed with struggles, dreams and whole lives shown within these pages. Each character and storyline evokes feelings from you and even though they might now all get the storybook happy ending you will remember them for a long time.

Chris Whitaker writes the best young female main characters. This book gripped me from the first page and I found myself not wanting to put it down. This will be a book I go back to again.

I wanted to love this book, however found it to be overly wordy and long. I got tired of Whitaker explaining everything in great detail. And then something important would happen and he would describe it so quickly--in less than a sentence and I'd miss it. Not for me. I didn't enjoy the experience. I kept reading because everyone else loved it and I did want to figure out that mystery, so that's something, I guess.

I did enjoy reading this book although it was not as good as We Begin at the End. I want to thank NetGalley and Crown Publishing for an advance copy.

Woooow! Chris Whitaker's last one was a little underwhelming for me (though I was definitely in the minority!), but I was so excited to receive an ARC of his new one - and it lived up to my very high expectations! I'd heard about this book everywhere and put off reading it, which I absolutely regret. Once I buckled down and committed, it took ~50 pages to get into it and learn who everyone was and then I could not stop flipping pages. It's a beast of a book at about 600 pages, but it truly flew by, though I think it could have been a tiny bit shorter. The story spanned about four decades, and I fell in love with all of the characters. This was a slow burning story of love, loss, friendship, and hope, and I am so glad I read it. Try to go in blind though! I can't wait to see what the author does next. Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I had heard about this book and everyone was prepping me for it to be a lifechanging book of 2024. I am happy that I have read it and I have enjoyed discussing the many different character relationships and dynamics. For me, the darkness sat with me for a while. I totally felt the emotion of this book. The character development of all of the side characters was amazing. I felt like I could see them and see the scenes. The description of the small town life made it feel like you were there.

Chris Whitaker has done it again. All The Colors of the Dark cements his status as a masterful storyteller with an ability to weave a thrilling narrative with an emotional purpose.

I had no idea when I started this book that it would completely captivate me. The story is heart wrenching. The love that Saint has for her friend Patch left me saddened that more characters in books (and in life) are not able to experience this kind of emotion. Each character in the book brings a new layer of complexity and depth, from the police chief to the main protagonist, Patch. Although the book is lengthy it allows the reader to become immersed in the story. The twists and turns keep the reader on edge. This is possibly the best book that I read last year (2024).

One of the best books Ive read in a long time. At first I felt like the writing and the plot were all over the place and I almost moved on to something different but I am glad I stuck it out because this story blew me away.

Wow - what a fantastic literary thriller. This evoked all the emotions for me and left me so connected to the characters and the storyline.

This was my absolute favorite book of the summer. Although my summer reads have consisted of 90% romance books, All the Colors of the Dark absolutely hooked its claws into me almost immediately. After you read a few of the (very short) chapters you get a sense of who the main characters are and where the book is heading. I began reading the ebook but switched to the audio so I was able to continue this book in a 48 hour time period. I couldn’t put it down and had to find out what happened. The characters in this are really written well and you’re rooting for them all, while simultaneously guessing what is going to happen. I loved the twists and turns in the last 20% of the book because they caught me off guard in the best way and really shocked me. Scratch favorite book of the summer, this was one of my favorite reads of 2024.