Find You in the Dark by Nathan Ripley [eARC Review]

I received this novel as an advance copy from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for my honest review.

This book had a synopsis that guaranteed I had to read it. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me for liking really creepy and messed-up books … but then again, I love reading these books too much to care! Anyways, here is my review:

Summary (Goodreads): Martin Reese has a hobby: he digs up murder victims. He buys stolen police files on serial killers, and uses them to find and dig up missing bodies. Calls in the results anonymously, taunting the police for their failure to do their job.

Detective Sandra Whittal takes that a little personally. She’s suspicious of the mysterious caller, who she names the Finder. Maybe he’s the one leaving the bodies behind. If not, who’s to say he won’t start soon?

As Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder, Martin makes a shocking discovery. It seems someone—someone lethal—is very unhappy about the bodies he’s been digging up.

Hunted by a cop, hunted by a killer. To escape and keep his family safe, Martin may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever imagined.

---

Review: I really really wanted to love this book, and I had high expectations for it because the premise just sounded so amazing. However, it just didn’t work for me.

I think one of my big problems with this book is that it has a very slow pace. It took a long time for the story to get going and even when it did, it wasn’t necessarily presented in the most interesting way. I wanted things to be fast-paced to keep in line with the intensity of the premise. But this was definitely a slow burner of a story, and I don’t know if it really worked well for this type of novel.

I also didn’t really like any of the characters and found the style of conversation between different characters to be very stilted and awkward. It really wasn’t realistic at all, which is one of my pet peeves. I wish the interactions had been developed better as that really hindered my ability to enjoy reading this book. I also felt that the characters lacked the depth I was looking for. Martin is just very, very dull for the longest time and I found him annoying. I didn’t like the two police detectives as they were very cookie-cutter and one-dimensional; I wanted something more unique from them.

Overall, this novel had an interesting premise but it didn’t meet my expectations. I wanted deeper characters and a faster pace, so for these reasons, I’m giving it a 2/5 stars.

Happy reading ~