I started reading it without knowing it was a Marvel book. I know nothing about Marvel. It was interesting enough. I felt like there was some stuff that I didn’t know because of that but I understood most of it. I liked the main character.

Breaking the Dark was a great mix of Marvel superhero's in a thriller story. I was attracted to this book because I have always been interested in Jessica Jones as a character, but once I realized this story would be written by Lisa Jewell I was sure I needed to read it. I was a little concerned that the mix of a suspense thriller would be lessened by characters with super powers, but Jewel writes a believable world with real dangers and Jessica Jones is such an interesting and complicated character with demons of her own. I was hooked from the first few pages and on the edge of my seat for much of the story. I would highly recommend for both Marvel and Jewel fans. Jewel gives us a version of Jones that is true to the comics and keeps careful consistency with that canon, while writing in a style and pacing that few can do as well.

Although I loved this book and Lisa Jewell never disappoints, at first I did not realize that the title character was a fallen Marvel superhero . Once I figured that out, I was all in. I loved the blending of the Marvel genre with my love of stories set in rural Britain. The combination was the perfect set-up for the mysterious change in Amber Randall's children. I do not want to give away too much but it is definitely a must-read and I forward to further installments in this series.

I picked this ARC because of Lisa Jewell being the author. Usually I am not a supernatural or superpowers person but I thought it would be interesting.

I have not watched the Netflix series with Jessica Jones and her super powers, but I was intrigued that there was a series that mirrored it. I wouldn't say this one was a favorite for me because some things felt a little forced in terms of the personal relations of Jessica but it was an interesting read. Towards the end I just wanted it to end which isn't the most glowing recommendation but...

Thank you NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Another phenomenal book by Lisa Jewell.
Well written and intriguing. I was drawn in from the beginning. Jewell always does an amazing job with all of her books.

I am a huge Marvel fan and I really wanted to like this one more than I actually did. I LOVED Jessica Jones but HATED the plot of this. The mystery was so far fetched, unbelievable and so muddled I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. I would read another Lisa Jewell Jessica Jones book but hopefully with a much better crime to follow.

Ok, I did not realize this story is a bit on the Sci-fi side of the book world. Not really my genre at all. But, I did read it. So, take my review with a grain of salt!

Amber Randall is seeking help from private investigator, Jessica Jones. Jessica does not really believe Amber when she says her twins are not right. The twins have just returned back to the states after a long stay with their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect”.

This is not your usual Lisa Jewell. She is one of my favorite go to suspense authors. As usual, she has wonderful characters. This is what kept me reading. I love Jessica. She is a hot mess but she is also intelligent and a bit snarky!

I also enjoyed the hunt to find out what happened to the twins! What kind of brain washing or experience did they actually have? This is where the story deviated from the normal. It involves human blood and not the vampire kind.

If this is what you like, you will enjoy this one. It is just a bit far fetched and “out there”. But, it is not going to stop me from reading this author, I will just skip this series.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

I like Lisa Jewell and I love Jessica Jones so I was excited to discover this book. It was interesting to read a Marvel novel, and I liked that it had a bit of a darker undertone than most Marvel stuff. I did think the story seemed to start not at the beginning and the past tense story took me a lot longer to get into than Jessica’s storyline. I thought what she was going through was very interesting and I liked it overall. Jessica has retreated to Hell’s Kitchen to lick her wounds and try to recover after being used and controlled. A woman named Amber comes and offers her a lot of money to figure out what happened to her twin teenage children. She says they returned from their father’s home in England with crazy perfect skin, a lack of interest in their cell phones, and an obsession with the word perfect. After a little reluctant investigating Jessica realizes that Amber is right and something mysterious is going on. I’m intrigued that the next book is about Luke Cage and I think I will be definitely keeping an eye out for that one.

See the full review and get a recipe that matches the book: https://bakingthroughbookclub.com/2024/07/18/a-filtered-view-of-the-marvel-universe/

Confession: I have zero interest in superheroes. My husband grew up reading a wide variety of comics, and he loves exploring the many facets of the Marvel Universe. When the movies started to come out (at an alarming rate, I might add), I tried going with him. I eventually gave up when he got annoyed at me for asking a billion questions about what was happening. If you don’t have a strong foundation of each character’s backstory in the Marvel Universe, watching the movies can be difficult.

All of that makes me either the best person in the world or the worst person in the world to review Lisa Jewell’s new book, Breaking the Dark. Jewell has taken over the Jessica Jones story line in the first crime novel of the series. While I can’t attest to how closely the book follows Jessica Jones’s life in the Marvel Universe, I can say that superhero background knowledge is not necessary to enjoy this book.

The book opens with Jessica struggling to make sense of her directionless existence. She has left her extraordinary past and is trying to carve a new path for herself. After being subjected to mind-control at the hands of Kilgrave, who tried to get her to assassinate Daredevil, she feels outcasted from the superhero community. Jessica believes the experience will always put her on the outside of the superhero world, even as they try to assure her that she is welcome. I promise that this is extent of the Marvel knowledge needed to read this book. Just remember: Jessica Jones = mind-controlled in the past. Oh, and please don’t come after me if you think my summary is off. Again, I haven’t read any comics, seen any TV shows, or watched any movies. I’m just going off this book.

Jessica has moved to New York City, where she opened up a private investigation business. One day. she is visited by Amber. Amber is an incredibly wealthy divorcee whose teenage twins just came back from spending the summer in the UK with their father. Once they got home, however, they are acting different. Their skin is flawless, and things that used to interest them no longer hold their attention. They keep saying everything is, “perfect, ” and they often forget their phones. All of us parents with teenagers know that is a red flag. Amber wants Jessica to investigate their odd behavior to see what really went down in the UK.

Alongside Jessica’s investigation we are also introduced to Polly, a young woman who is willing to stop at nothing to quench the thirst of ambition. One day, Polly encounters a powerful medium named Ophelia. Convinced that she can capitalize on Ophelia’s strength, she breaks into her home to see what secrets Ophelia holds. What she finds changes the course of her and Ophelia’s lives forever and puts her on a path to encounter Jessica Jones in the future.

I can’t really go further into the plot without revealing spoilers. However, I found this book to be really intriguing. It’s a compelling mixture of mystery and sci-fi. But, is sci-fi even the right word? What are the limits of technology, and what costs are we willing to pay to reach them? This book makes you question all of that while wrapping your head around the intriguing mystery of Amber and her two twins, Lark and Fox. Sometimes what seems beautiful is far from it, and what seems impossible is possible when you throw all morals aside.

While I suspect that Marvel fans might want more tie-ins to Jessica Jones’s history, I felt it was a good balance for those of us who are completely ignorant of her backstory. At the end of the day, Marvel and Non-Marvel fans alike can appreciate a good mystery from Lisa Jewell.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Interesting change from Jewell’s regular stories. I wasn’t sure how deeply it would go into the super hero mode. This was just enough to still carry out the whole story. Very enjoyable! This would make a good tv movie! Great mystery and worth reading.

An imaginative and engaging story is ruined by a best-selling author deciding that everything has to have a classic happy ending.
Jessica Jones of the comic Alias (and the TV show of the same name) starts her most bizarre private investigation, one that takes her out of Hell’s Kitchen. A New York mom hires Jessica to investigate what happened to her children when they were in England with their father. The children have come back different: they look flawless and refer to everything as “perfect”. They no longer like their typical hobbies and are obsessed with “Miranda.” Jesica heads to England where she is confronted with a young girl who thinks she’s not real and a companion who cares for her while her parents are away. How do these two tie into what is happening to the kids in New York?
I really enjoyed the story. It is creepy and supernatural, but it’s traumatic to Jessica. You feel for her as she is once again manipulated and abused. You cheer as she moves through something way outside her comfort zone. Lisa Jewell does well in balancing what is happening in New York and England, using Malcolm (Jessica’s intern) as a connector. She also paces the stories by time periods; the readers start to unravel the story before Jessica can. I read this book in three sessions because the action and pacing were so good.
Jewell does make a few missteps. She doesn’t describe the character so if you don’t know the comics or the MCU show you don’t have any idea. I wouldn’t use this book as a gateway to Marvel. While I like seeing Jessica outside her comfort zone, I’m annoyed that Jewell reverts back to what she is comfortable with (England) instead of really stretching her writing muscles. I can forgive these but there is one thing I cannot.
Jewell “fixes” Jessica! And she does this outside of the actions in the book! We get an epilogue where she has a new job and is not even the woman she was before. And Jewell does this with a baby! (I know she has a child with Cage but this just wipes away the Jessica we know.) My badass mixed-up woman becomes a house cat. I have no problem sanding her corners down, less alcohol yada yada, but this was blasphemy! If I had a physical version of the book, I would have thrown this across the room.
The mystery and its elements are great, and I loved seeing Jessica and Luke Cage work together. But Jewell decides to take the character I love and ruin her. This is the first of Marvel crime novels with the following ones about Daredevil and Luke Cage. They are written by well-known authors, and I hope the same issues that affect Breaking the Dark will not plague them.

Not her usual work as she warns but it’s entertaining. I liked the mystery and she captured main character very well.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
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I am a HUGE Marvel fan so how excited do you think I was when this blind request got granted and I realized what it was?! I was absolutely stoked. 
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Jessica Jones is a superhero, but she's also incredibly flawed which makes her feel more relatable. I loved the Jessica Jones series, so I knew right from the start of this one that I was going to enjoy it. What I didn't expect was to be so engrossed in this story that I would fly through it in a day. Jewell was able to create the perfect suspenseful superhero story. It is eerie, it had mystery, it had supernatural elements and I was super invested right from the start.
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I felt like this was pretty fast paced throughout and the story just flowed really well. Jewell managed to make everything come full circle in the end and while it may not have been the most "shocking" endings, I found it to be highly entertaining and I love where she decided to take this story. Also, can I just say that Malcolm needs to be my new best friend. I loved him so much.
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Breaking the Dark is the start of the Marvel Crime Novel series, and I cannot wait to see where the other authors take their stories. Rumor has it, S. A. Cosby will be writing a Luke Cage novel?? If this is true then I cannot wait to read that. 
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Breaking the Dark was just released on 7/2. If you are a Marvel fan or enjoy supernatural thrillers - pick this one up. Huge thank you to NetGalley, Lisa Jewell and Hyperion Avenue for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is definitely a different type of thriller from Lisa Jewell, but I think it works! A huge thank you to the publisher for sending out ARCs to read in advance. The plot itself was a little slow to get going and the superhero/sci-fi undertones kept throwing me off, but this wound up being a fun and I'll definitely be following the series.

Jessica Jones is a retired superhero and current private investigator who enjoys being by herself. But when a concerned mother approaches her asking for help into answering why her children are acting abnormally, Jessica can't help herself. Little does she know that this case will send her to a remote village with gruesome secrets.

Unique and Well-structured, this is an Atypical thriller.

Breaking the Dark is a marriage between one of today's most successful suspense writers and the Marvel Universe. Lisa Jewell and superhero Jessica Jones may seem like strange bedfellows, but Breaking the Dark is a credit to both women. The "mystery" part of the plot is classic Lisa Jewell-she lays out the latest threat to mankind (a psychotic social media influencer with an app that makes users "perfect," but with deadly consequences) clearly and neatly, and the perfectly imperfect Jessica Jones may be a superhero, but she embodies the best of humanity-empathy, courage, and resilience. Breaking the Dark is entertaining and engrossing, with enough suspense that you really begin to question who is going to win this battle between good and evil. But there's light at the end of the tunnel, and hopefully it will lead to more collaborations between Miss Jewel and the Marvel's.

I am not a Marvel fan, but I am a Lisa Jewell fan. I am glad she tried something new and moved out of her box. I did enjoy the book, but it is not my favorite.

Jessica Jones as a character is flawed and relatable, minus the superhero powers. I liked the escape to the world where you do not question what is going on.

I don't know if I will continue this series, but I look forward to her next psychological thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the advanced copy; this is my voluntary review.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Lisa Jewell ventures into uncharted territory kicking off the Marvel crime series of thriller books for adults, through the eyes of gritty, dark private eye Jessica Jones. It's a must- read for fans of MCU and crime thrillers- offering a fresh story on familiar characters and a compelling story.

I didn't know anything about the Marvel character, Jessica Jones, but this book inspired me to learn more. The story features the superhero on a mission to understand why twins returned from a summer in the UK as entirely different people in looks and personality. I enjoyed the mystery with a little supernatural on the side

gorgeous, dark, and just what I was craving -- love this textual take on a beloved comic and screen character.

I am an all time lover of Jessica Jones, and I have enjoyed a few of Lisa Jewell's book in my thriller books club, hence the reason I was super excited for this book. I think, however, that this book was a bit of a let down. There is a distinct clunkiness to the superhero elements that are here and the thriller aspect of it. One of Jessica's charm in both comics, TV, and any other iteration is tat although she will never reach a B-tier hero list, she isn't afraid of using anything at her disposal to gain an upper hand. She's a scrapper, and I fear that Jewell's version of Jessica is a bit more passive. The jumping timelines were also just a bit unimpressive, but I do understand that this is a staple of the genre.

I will love to see Jewell continue with Jessica, because I do think that there are moments where she fully grasps the character and I would love to see her spin on it.