"The Dark We Know" had a promising premise—returning to her hometown, to discover an evil has taken over the town and uncovering past tragedies. However, I struggled to connect with the story. While the book was intriguing, the pacing and narrative made me enjoy it less.

This book was a decent read, for a YA novel.

This book was different than what I’ve read before. It was creepy and atmospheric. There were elements that definitely made me unsettled. There were also parts I had to go back and reread/relisten to due to me spacing out. Some parts I just didn’t enjoy. However, definitely a solid book to read for YA Horror.

Such a lovely cover and a dark story.

This one has some heavy themes. Definitely visit the trigger warnings and take care before reading.
I think this is one of the first books in a while that actually suffered from me doing it as an audiobook and I had to flip this one back to my e-reader.

The plot is heavy and the characters are pretty angsty. I felt like I didn't get a lot of build up of the tension or the horror - it's pretty quickly the old friend in town just drops the bomb that she has to help him and then story was off from there. I liked a few twists but somehow always felt outside of the story and never found my groove with the writing. I liked it, found it interesting, but never loved it.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

2.5 Stars

"The Dark We Know" follows Isadpra Chang as she is forced to return to Slater the repressive small town she ran away from. However, I found myself wishing this book was from any other character's perspective. Isadora's P.O.V. was quite the slog to get through, plus I found the overall reading experience to be overwhelmingly boring. Also, the flowery writing in this novel didn't match the tone I believe the author intended to set, so I didn't find the novel's atmosphere as chilling as I expect the author hoped I would.

To focus on Isa and her running away from Slater, I don't think that made much sense. Based on the current age of Isa and the other characters we follow, she was about 16 when she first ran away and started university and I'm pretty sure you need to have some sort of parental permission to enter university at that age. Then the timeline for the town doesn't really make any sense either. A big part of the creation of evil plaguing Slater is the mass death that occurred during/because of a plague. But as the story goes on, we discover that the plague wasn't that far back in history as the story initially led us to believe. And since this plague took place sometime in (earliest) the early 1900s, many of the actions taken by the characters in the plague didn't seem like things they could easily get away with.

As I said before, the overall reading experience of this book was really boring, I attribute this to the fact that almost the entirety of the novel lacked any actual suspense or tension. There were scenes that I felt should have heightened the overall tension, but the writing went on so much that it took me out of the story.

The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee is a haunting and beautifully written novel that blends small-town secrets, queer identity, and supernatural terror into a story that lingers long after you’ve turned the last page.

Isadora Chang is in college when her sister Trisha calls with news their father died. So Isa reluctantly returns to the last place she wants to be—Slater, a grim and oppressive former mining town that practically drips with dread. Lee nails the feeling of being trapped, not just by geography but by history, trauma, and unresolved grief. Isa’s voice is raw and authentic as she's dealing with depression. The reason she escaped was because two of her best friends suddenly died and she didn't get to say goodbye to either.

"When I ran away with no plan, part of me was hoping to end up a police file too, so at least I'd be written down somewhere, so at least I could join them. Leave or die, my brain is screaming."

The book is kicked into high gear when Mason, Isa’s surviving childhood friend and the town medium’s son, reveals that he doesn't believe the deaths of their friends were tragic accidents—they were caused by a supernatural entity. What follows is a tense, eerie unraveling of Slater’s dark secrets, with Isa and Mason forced to confront their pain and fears head-on. The supernatural mystery is both chilling and emotionally resonant, weaving in themes of generational trauma and the lingering impact of small-town repression.

"It's amazing how many things you can keep shut inside a house that never opens its curtains, what the worst gossips in the world can ignore."

Lee’s prose is atmospheric without being overwrought, and her descriptions of Slater—a town where even the air seems heavy with unspoken pain—are stunning. The supernatural elements are terrifying yet symbolic, exploring how death, grief, and heartbreak can manifest as something monstrous. The eerie artwork Isa creates without remembering, the haunting melodies she hears on the wind, and the sense that something is always watching the townsfolk—all of it builds a creeping sense of dread that keeps you turning pages late into the night. Everyone in this town is either running or hiding.

At its heart, The Dark We Know is more than a horror story. It’s about confronting the things we’d rather bury, both in ourselves and in our pasts. Isa’s journey is messy and cathartic, as she reckons with her identity, her complicated relationship with her parents, and the bonds she left behind. The friendship between Isa and Mason is a standout—strained, but tender and deeply loyal. Their dynamic adds emotional weight to the supernatural stakes, making every decision feel personal.

"It seems unfair that the two of us who are still alive are the most heartless half."

If you love stories that mix character-driven drama with spine-tingling horror, this book is for you. Wen-yi Lee has crafted an unsettling and captivating tale about what it means to face the darkness—together and alone. This one got a solid four stars, I highly recommended!

"I think we can choose not to become what hurt us because that's how you know the world is chooseable and if it is chooseable then it is makeable and if it is makeable then we can make something better of it."

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Zando-Gillian Flynn Books, for providing this eARC with me in exchange for my honest opinion. This review is based off of an uncorrected proof which did not sway my opinion either way.

This was absolutely fantastic. I adored the themes of grief and different ways people choose to deal with it. I really loved our main character Isa and her desperation to just have normalcy and forget the past, no matter how hard it tries to drag her back. I loved the mystery and the horror elements of the story and how the entity fed off pain. It was creepy and the writing was absolutely stunning.

Thank you to Netgalley for an e-book ARC of this book. And thank you Mai for putting this on my radar!

This YA horror book was everything. In fact, it was so good I binged it in 4 days and could not stop thinking about it. I think YA horror might be a new favorite genre for me.

Isadora Chang is a Chinese American teenager who left for art school and told herself she would never return to her hometown of Slater. But when her dad dies unexpectedly she attends the funeral and is swept up into a mystery involving talking to ghosts, digging into the archives to find out what really happened in the mining accident decades before, hunting a death angel, and fighting off the angel’s song which lures its victims into committing suicide.

This book was the perfect mix between mystery, thriller, and horror. There were so many deep dives into cultural shame, loneliness, belonging, and LGBTQ coming out/acceptance. The writing was gorgeous and filled with emotional dialogue and prose. I loved this book so much that I will now read anything Wen-Yi Lee writes next. This was her debut novel.

Do yourself a favor and pick this book up. It’s such an engaging and unique read.

Wen-yi Lee’s The Dark We Know is a masterful blend of mystery and emotional depth that keeps you on the edge of your seat. With lyrical prose and haunting imagery, Lee explores the complexities of family, memory, and the secrets we carry. The twists are perfectly timed, and the richly drawn characters make this story unforgettable. A must-read for fans of atmospheric and thought-provoking fiction.

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. It was a nice story idea, but I had trouble connecting with the characters. I found myself putting it down and waiting days to pick it up again.

I was really excited to read this one, but I could not do it. I couldn't connect with any of the characters or care about anything that was happening. I only made it halfway, starting and stopping so many times before I said okay. This one is not for me.

This ist a poetically written story about grieve, loss and the strength to continue to live your life despite the many set backs you will have. This was dark and gruesome at times and so very relatable, I really enjoyed reading this book.

I absolutely adored this! The characters, the setting, it was such a thrilling read!

Isa only comes back to the small town she grew up in after her abusive father dies. Without that threatening presence, the trip should have been bearable, but when she begins to hear things, and her drawings become reality, she and her friend Mason, need to discover the truth of what is haunting the small town before it takes it next victim.

A perfect read for the Halloween Season!

There were a lot of strong reviews of this one, but I was personally a bit more mixed on it. The atmosphere is good, however.

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

Slater has a rich history of people's pain. Called the Angel by locals, a being feeds off this pain using nightmares to derive more.
Called by the death of her abusive father, Isa returns home. After the death of two close friends, Isa ran off to college, putting herself and a life together. Now Isa is force to experience Slater, her loss, and Mason - the friend remaining.
The song returns - one she has heard since a child, now being revealed in her drawings.
Great building of tension, backstory and unhinged Slater residents.

I really wanted to enjoy this book but it just wasn’t for me. I struggled to get into the story and found that it took a bit too long for the action to ramp up. I think the plot had a lot of potential but ultimately there wasn’t enough early character development to keep me engaged.

Really enjoyed this book, slow in some places however it was very uniquely written and the story line was different enough that I happily stuck with it. Was a great overall story, and the characters and story were really unique!

The story had me on the edge of my seat, gripping my chair at the whole entire time even though this was a YA book, I was completely addicted to it the whole entire entire time and I’m so glad that I was accepted to read this book. It was an amazing ride, and I can’t wait to see what other books this author has.

Though it tells rather than shows a little too often, The Dark We Know is a solid, finely observed young adult horror yarn.

Written by Wen-yi Lee, The Dark We Know comes to us from Gillian Flynn Books, so it seems appropriate that there's more than a hint of Flynn's own Camille Preaker in Lee's troubled protagonist, Isadora Chang — and, for that matter, more than a hint of Sharp Objects' ruminations on trauma and repression in small-town America in this narrative. Isadora returns from art school to Slater, the mining town where she grew up, to attend the funeral of her abusive father, and it's immediately clear that she doesn't relish this homecoming: as soon as she steps out of the car, she refers to "Slater winter smothering me like a friend," a nice bit of description that says a lot about how she feels about Slater and even more about how she feels about friends.

In fact, two of her childhood friends are no longer living, and after her alienated upbringing in this dead-end place, Isa is in no mood to get close to anybody, least of all here. But the plot has other ideas, and soon she is approached by Mason Kane, son of the local medium and her last remaining friend. There's something out there, says Mason, that killed the others and recently claimed the life of wealthy young Paige Vandersteen — and Isa needs to help stop it. But what, exactly, is it? Could it be the same presence that sings enticing songs to her in the wind? That makes her draw pictures she can't remember creating, one of which is of the departed Paige?

There is no shortage of narratives about trauma these days — especially horror narratives — and the broad strokes of this story may seem a bit familiar at first glance. And sometimes Lee bluntly states something that could have been made richer with imagery ("for most of our childhood, the four of us were inseparable") or gives her characters on-the-nose dialogue ("I can't afford to be not normal"). What she excels at, though, is something just as important: the well-chosen detail. The absence of a Bible on the mantelpiece represents how the house breathes easier without a malignant father. A lingering scent suggests his influence hasn't gone away as quickly as Isa, her mother, and her sister hoped it would.

Nothing goes away as quickly as any of the characters hope in this book. Just as nothing seems to change in Slater — still run by one wealthy family with its own demons to fight, still insular and hushed and secretive — there seems to be no rest for Isa or Mason or anybody else until the past is confronted in one form or another. I can't spoil the mystery of exactly what form this takes, but suffice it to say, it makes for a satisfying conclusion.

The Sharp Objects comparison may do The Dark We Know a disservice. It's a very different story: explicitly supernatural, geared towards younger audiences, and considerably less venomous. It is, in any case, exactly what it aims to be: Lee sets her sights squarely on the target, and hits it.

"The Dark We Know" is the debut by Wen-yi Lee and oh my what a great one!

In the past years I realized that YA Horror is actually horror that I like: Not simply gory, not simply told but with deeper themes, issues and characters. And this book fits perfectly into this realisation.

Especially how the horror is connected to events in the past and how our protagonists interact with those events and their influences on the problems at hand is something I really liked.

The connection between the characters in the now and the past a few years ago from the time of the story is richly described and I like how supernatural elements are presented. How our protagonist is a conduct for even more and how she always felt like "the song from the mountains" is not good but frightening.

How everything is put together in the end was quite amazing and I love the representation of diversity along the way. I would also love some stories with Otto! ;D

I really liked this horror story even as I had some issues with the pacing at the passage of the beginning to the rest of the plot.

Thank you, Netgalley and Zando, for providing me the eARC of The Dark We Know, by Wen-yi Lee 🦋 Unfortunately, this book disappointed me. I expected more and better. There were confusing parts, errors in the time sequence of events and the themes involved ended up being more important than the story itself. In other words, I absolutely respect and appreciate how religious, homophobic and prejudiced traumas are talked about in this book. However, the story took a back seat so that we could have these life lessons, which could have been present in the story in a much more natural, organic way, but that's not what happened, in my opinion. It is, regardless, a genuine portrait. I greatly appreciate this heartfelt exploration of such heavy and real themes. The problem is that the story got lost. I finished reading this book feeling that I didn't retain much of it. The beginning was good. We are introduced to these themes in a more natural way, but that stopped happening as I kept reading. Still, as I said, these are themes that, thankfully, are increasingly explored in literature, but here, that exploration got lost. There was more to do in this story and everything was just... scattered.

But not everything was bad, of course. The writing is atmospheric. It really is a dark read, there is something that is haunting about it, but that feeling was better felt at the beginning. For example, there is this idea of a house that could be a haunted entity, but, well, that was one of the things that got lost along the way, sadly.

There is not much to say about the writing, except that I really liked the chapters from the perspective of the Angel, the great supernatural entity in the book. Again, another thing whose execution fell short regarding my expectations.

As for the characters, it is possible to empathize with them, but I also expected more from them. They did not captivate me completely.

It is a book that suffers a lot from there being so many things that could happen. There are so many paths that could have been taken and they would have been fantastic, so interesting, but the execution was done too quickly and we lose our way while reading the book. We lose our reason for being curious about reading the book.

I give it 2.5 ⭐