What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I first read the synopsis for What Grows in the Dark, I was immediately intrigued. I also enjoyed the cover art and the title is compelling to me.
Then I started drowning in other new releases and sort of forgot about it for bit. Recently, as I was going through my list of unread-ARCs it piqued my interest again, so I looked it up to refresh my memory on the synopsis.
Again, it sounded interesting to me, so I was surprised to see that its rating was only around 3.01-stars. Nevertheless, I’m no stranger to being in the minority opinion on books, so I wasn’t afraid and decided to give it a go.
After I completed the first 15%, I wrote a status update to say how much I was loving it. The tone and the direction it was taking, I was really into it, really intrigued. I had a gut feeling that it was going to be at least a 4-star read for me.
Sadly, now that I’m finished, I get the overall rating. Regardless of how strong it started for me, the further I got into it, the more it started to lose steam and my attention. It got muddled and my interested definitely waxed and waned.
I think this author has great ideas and it was a fun set-up, but I feel like somewhere in translating the ideas from their head, onto the page, for the Reader to understand, something missed the mark. It’s too bad, because I do see a lot of promise here.
This is a true Supernatural Thriller/Mystery, which reads a lot like a YA story, even though it is Adult. I love YA Horror/Thriller novels, actually preferring them over Adult in a lot of instances, so that’s no shade from me, but I am guessing that does have an impact on the rating.
In my opinion, this would be a great book for Readers looking to transition more into the Adult space for the first time. For others, I would just caution this feels, at best, more New Adult, than Adult.
It also includes one of my favorite tropes, following a main character returning to their hometown, after many years away, looking to solve, or deal with, some sort of unresolved issue, mystery, or trauma. That fact alone is what initially grabbed my attention.
Unfortunately, that trope alone wasn’t enough, but just because it didn’t work for me, doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. I would urge anyone with interest to pick it up. It’s just a book. What do you have to lose?
Thank you to the publisher, MIRA, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I would absolutely give this author another try. The concepts and the writing are there, I just wanted something a little different from the execution.