Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's | Delacorte Press for this ARC! "Darkly" by Marisha Pessl is a gripping YA psychological thriller that follows Arcadia "Dia" Gannon as she navigates a summer internship with the mysterious Louisiana Veda Foundation. Obsessed with the late game designer Louisiana Veda, Dia and six other teenagers are chosen to uncover the secrets behind Veda's enigmatic games and the foundation's dark legacy. The novel is filled with intricate clues and hidden connections, typical of Pessl's style, making it a chilling and addictive read. As the interns delve deeper into Veda's world, they must question their reality and their own motives, leading to a suspenseful and twisted narrative.

Astonishingly good. Marisha Pessl’s DARKLY captivated me from the first few pages, and, against all reason, managed to get more and more fascinating as I read. I am taken aback by how quickly the world around me fell away to nothingness after I began DARKLY. The mystery, the intrigue, the tension, the romance, the characters — this book has it all, and then some.

I had somehow never heard of Pessl before coming across this ARC, but now I feel compelled to go and read all of her other works. I’m calling it now: DARKLY might just be one of the best books of the year. And Pessl might just cinch best author.

Night Film is one of my favorite novels, and this feels like a fun spiritual successor to that book. Both stories are about a mysterious creator of art (films/board games) and a mystery surrounding them. This wasn't as deep or mysterious as Night Film for me, but it was still a fun mystery and adventure filled with cool ideas. The games are compelling, the characters are interesting, and I flew through the pages. Very fun read.

I'd read and loved "Night Film" by Pessl years ago, but most of her other offerings left me cold. I was eager to give this one a shot, however, as a girl who grew up on sprawling puzzle games like Myst. The strange premise and promise of eerie mystery lured me in.

First of all - good news, this one is weird. It follows the story of a handful of teenagers selected for a strange sort of internship in the name of a long-dead video game designer.

The bad news is that the dialogue is trying so hard to be deep that no one sounds like teenagers, even pretentious ones, and the prose itself has never met a simile it didn't adore. If you have a higher tolerance for purple than I do, you might be able to get past it, but I struggled to care about this group of SO unique and SO quirky teens from the get-go. They were insufferable.

Enter another spiraling rabbit hole from the mind of Marisha Pessl.

In Darkly, we are introduced to the world of Darkly games, a strange and mysterious gaming company created by the equally illusive Louisiana Veda. This summer, Arcadia "Dia" Gannon, known mostly for her vintage interests and grandmotherly tendencies, along with seven teenagers from around the global are offered an opportunity of a lifetime--an internship with the Louisiana Veda Foundation. But this internship is far from a stuffy office in London, it will send Dia down a twisty rabbit hole and into the world of Darly, where nothing at all is what it seems.

Once again, Pessl creates fictional media I desperately wish existed in the real world. Her puzzles are so intricately plotted, I was holding my breath until the last page for the final piece to be revealed. Marisha Pessl, much like her Louisiana Veda creation, always sends readers into the dark before shining a light on the path. I only wish she would write it for an adult audience.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I DEVOURED this. Usually I don't love mysteries, but the combination of setting and the hook of a mysterious board game creator on a semi haunted island? I'm HOOKED. The only thing I didn't love was the romance! Fabulously well done story.

I’ve been chasing the dark euphoria that Marisha Pessl’s Night Film enveloped me in when I first read it years ago, never quite finding it, never quite believing it could be found. But here, in her latest novel Darkly, I’ve rediscovered it. Exciting, dangerous, puzzling, obsessive, murderous, lonely, beautiful, hopeful, and yes dark, this book is a thrill ride that left me reeling. Plan on not being able to put it down for the last 100 pages or so. What a creeping wonder. What a shadowy delight.

I had yet to read a Marisha Pessl book before Darkly and I was really pleased I had the chance to read this! It was a good YA book and kept me interested the entire time.

The writing here really didn't work for me (which is interesting, because I loved 'Neverworld Wake' years ago, but that's probably a sign of my changing taste rather than anything about Pessl's voice). However, the plot and world are fairly fun and weird, so it kept my interest enough to finish the novel. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, it kinda is, but I know tons of people--teens and older adults alike--will go absolutely nuts for this book.

Pessl’s NIGHT FILM is one of my all-time favorites. I did not like her previous foray into YA, NEVERWORLD WAKE, anywhere near as much, but this sounded so very good….I was hopeful.

This book is somewhere in the middle, good, but not great. However, since it is YA, but I enjoyed it as an adult, even “good” is high praise.

Arcadia “Dia” Gannon has been obsessed with the late game maker Louisiana Veda for years. Now her foundation is running an easy contest to select seven young interns from around the world for a summer internship. Dia figures she’s got no chance, but it’s also the dream of a lifetime, so she enters.

She is shocked when she is selected, along with six other seventeen year olds, Poe, Franz, Cooper, Torin, Everleigh and Mouse.

Louisiana is a cult figure even in death. Her company, Darkly, was famous for its, well, dark, complicated, sublime board games filled with tricks and secret symbols. After Louisiana’s death the company went bankrupt and no more games were produced. Those that exist are now collector’s items and sell for immense sums.

So the interns are involved in a mystery. Why were they chosen? Why aren’t they staying in London as they were told they would? Is someone still playing games?

OK, so, the perfection part of this book? These games. I would love to get my hot little hands on any one of them; I don’t even need one of the special prototypes, just a regular one would be fine. Because they sound INCREDIBLE. They are “the secret club at the end of the alley you can reach only by following the faint footsteps in a locked graveyard yesterday.” Gimme, gimme, gimme!

The game within the story is pretty good too. Some of the other aspects of the book were maybe a bit more typical in terms of what I expect from YA, but it’s all well written and nicely done. I hope this finds a wide audience. And I hope Pessl has more adult books on the horizon as well.

***Edited to add…Small quibble with the ending, mostly because I’m a lawyer, and yes, lawyers suck, I totally agree, but this has been on my mind! I don’t know all the differences between U.S. law and U.K. law on this issue, but they usually hew pretty closely. I don’t know that the conclusion reached is correct. There’s something pretty big that Dia is missing here. Her lawyer would see it right away. OK. I’m going to try to let this go now.

I don't read a lot of YA but I love Marisha Pessl. I loved the premise of this story; mysterious locales, lurking strangers, and cryptic puzzles. It's like Nancy Drew accepted a mysterious internship in 2024. The main characters were pretty interesting, and I continued to read to find out where they would end up in the next chapter, however some of the additional interns weren't very flushed out and didn't really grab me. I expected to find the ending lackluster, especially when I kept turning the page to find out we weren’t finished yet, but I found the final twist delightful!

Would recommend to mystery fans of all ages and maybe even fans of light horror.

This book surprised me! Gorgeous writing and some very creative plotting. I wasn't expecting such a twisty plot and surprising characters. Very much an unexpected favorite.

Darkly was such a fun read! It had me hooked from the beginning and once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. I ended up reading the whole book in less than 10 hours. It was so addicting. I had to know what was going to happen.

I loved the game aspect and the mixed media elements and how everything ties in together. You learn everything along with the MC and it makes the story very immersive.

I loved the twists, I didn’t see them coming at all.

Overall, I highly recommend!

I love all of Pessl's books. This one feels different, but then again maybe I just have Night Film forefront in my mind. I really enjoyed this and think it will be an easy hand sell.