Reviews - A Friend in the Dark

446 reviews for:

A Friend in the Dark

Samantha M. Bailey

3.37 AVERAGE

kmoseman's review against another edition

3.25

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

No. I could not get over how Eden abandoned her entire personality to pursue some guy from her past. I had to keep stopping in the first 7 chapters because it was just too ridiculous. She is the definition of someone ignoring all the

elebjones's review against another edition

2.0

Found some of the dialogue cringey, too many plot holes, and far fetched storyline. Eden getting back together with her husband at the end as if nothing had happened was the final straw. Enjoyed the start of the story, with the suspense and mystery, but then it became too far fetched for me to enjoy it.

sianidan's review against another edition

3.5

mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was a hard one for me to rate. It reached a point where it was like the main character was trying to be an idiot because I couldn't make sense of it otherwise. It is a fast-paced story though, which was nice for a quick thriller read. There are lots of twists, some I predicted and some that I didn't. Overall, I didn't hate it, but it's far from my favorite mystery/thriller.

aabosh's review

3.0

This is one of the dumbest books that I’ve read in a really long time. It was hilariously stupid, and I’m really torn because for such a bad book I had such a great time laughing and rolling my eyes incredulously.

Trigger warning: mental health issues, stalking, death of parents, child abuse, domestic violence, rape - I really hate when authors use these as plot points because they do a disservice to real people who suffer with these issues, and it’s a lazy way to move the story forward. If the book were written better, all these triggers would be truly distressing to the average reader and I find it distasteful when authors use these issues without sensitivity. I’d expect any book that uses any one of them items in their story line to have a trigger warning, and resources listed for people to follow up with if they are affected. The climax near the end was unnecessary violent and I always question when abject brutality is directed towards women in books.

I had initially given this a three star rating because it was a page turner that did keep me entertained, but after mulling over the issues with the book, I’m lowering it to one star.

I cannot recommend this book at all, because it’s just a bad book. I would hate for my review to increase the summary value rating for this book because it’s truly trashy. The premise is ridiculous, the main character is not very smart, the plot is unbelievable, and the whole novel is basically a bad lifetime movie. The characters are wooden, and the bad guy is comically evil. I have read two other books by the same author a few years ago and I don’t remember the books being as bad as this one.

But if you need a quick popcorn thriller to get you out of your reading slump, and you go into it knowing it’s poor quality, this may be it.