Reviews tagging 'Gore'

The Dark Place by Britney S. Lewis

2 reviews

bookishmillennial's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all. Everyone’s reading experiences are subjective, so I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me on Instagram: @bookish.millennial or tiktok: @bookishmillennial

Britney has described this as having Coraline vibes, because the main character Hylee slips into an alternate timeline, and time travels to a time her brother was alive & well. In the present, Hylee has moved to the suburbs in Missouri from Kansas City, Kansas, and her brother has gone missing. Her family refuses to discuss him, as they are all in denial and struggling with their grieving process.

Hylee meets a boy at a party, Eilam, and she accidentally disappears right in front of him, much to her chagrin. They begin to unravel what happened the night her brother went missing, and navigate what is happening to Hylee and her time traveling!

I appreciated the way that Hylee's entire family approached or avoided the conversation about her brother. It showed a realistic representation of what grief looks like, and how it can feel differently based on the person. I don't blame Hylee's parents for the way they behaved, because I can only imagine being in their positions. I have read so much about the inexplicable pain a parent feels when their child goes missing, and feeling resigned to never having answers. It's devastating, and I think Lewis illustrated their utter hopelessness and avoidance so perfectly.

I enjoyed the subplot of romance between Hylee and Eilam; I loved the little reveal between them, and thought they were both valid in their frustrations with the other. I especially enjoyed the ending, because I adore the trope of having to
find each other after inevitably changing the present by altering the past. I imagine a HFN for them, as they re-get to know each other, and as Hylee fills in Eilam on all they did in her alternate timeline
. 

This book was a beautiful tale of coming-of-age, eerie paranormal/science fiction, different types of grief, loss of a sibling, and finding the truth out for yourself! 
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lanawhite's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

 YA, horror/thriller, magical realism, time travel, grief and self-discovery
When Hylee disappears and materialises in a dark, distorted version of her old family home on the night her brother went missing, she realises this moment could be the key to unveiling what really happened all those years ago. Before she can investigate further, she is pulled from the dark place back to our world. Her parents, unable to look at her the same after her disappearance, send Hylee to stay with her grandmommy, and neither her family nor her once-best friend will speak to her about her disappearance. Meeting Eilam at a party, a handsome boy who seems inexplicably familiar appears to signal a return to some sense of normality until she disappears in front of him. But unlike everyone else in Hylee’s life, Eilam listens to her, and together, they investigate the truth about time, space, and reality itself. As they dive deeper into time travel, Hylee realises that darkness isn’t confined to the dark place; it is pervasive, all-encompassing, and slowly draining her dry.

It’s hard to explain just how beautifully unsettling this book is. The Dark Place covers the devastating loss of a sibling, processing grief, the experience of Black culture as defined by its loss of ancestral history, and how complex childhood trauma affects every aspect of a person’s being. 
Britney’s writing is poetic and magical. The way she uses words and literary devices to describe the dark place creates this sense of unnatural life, where it is so twisted that its very existence is an affront to the nature of life itself. There are a ridiculous amount of quotes from the book I could cite here as an example of this and one of my favourites is, “The darkness wrapped itself around me like a tourniquet, pressing into me until I felt my heartbeat throbbing against my neck.” This doesn’t just create the perfect unsettled feeling I want when I’m reading this type of horror but also paints an amazingly accurate and complex depiction of a child’s experience of trauma. 

As a psychology student, I loved how Britney portrayed Hylee’s experience of trauma. The issues that we see Hylee struggling with (particularly with relationships and her sense of self) are typical of survivors of this type of trauma. The specific points that Hylee remembers from what happened and how she describes them, anthropomorphising her surroundings and being unable to remember much of what happened, felt so real to me. That sense of reality immersed me in the story, making me connect to and understand Hylee, her thoughts, feelings, and choices. Her journey of self-discovery and process of healing from her trauma through having to experience the ‘dark place’ shows us how it’s not possible for any of us to truly progress in our own self-discovery or healing journey without accepting our own dark places and experiencing them knowing we have loved ones waiting on either side for us to make it through.

I have seen some reviews expressing that it didn’t make sense that none of Hylee’s family members supported her or would talk to her about both her brother going missing and her disappearing, but once again, I think Britney did an excellent job of showing that dealing with grief and the way that affects familial relationships can look vastly different depending on a whole host of factors. Given what each family member had been through, the systematic culture of silence around Black issues in America, the family’s socioeconomic status, generational differences, and the inherent intergenerational trauma of growing up Black in America, it made sense to me that each family member reacted as they did. In this, Britney has shown just how much our individual and communal experiences shape how we view tragedies/trauma and how we respond to them, amongst other complex points, whilst still remaining firmly in the YA fiction genre, and that’s no easy feat. I will clarify here, though, that social issues and their effects on people’s behaviour are something I am studying, so I am aware that this was perhaps not as clear to other readers (especially those of the target demographic) and so should have been made more explicit. Bryanna Bond’s review of The Dark Place on Goodreads discusses this in terms of Black families and their response to trauma, and I would recommend reading that.

Finally, in terms of the exploration of time travel in The Dark Place, I enjoyed the depiction of the Butterfly Effect, how seemingly little things can shape and alter the future in significant ways, and also how big things like trauma and tragedies affect every aspect of people and the world down to seemingly little things. I haven’t seen this specific approach to time travel before (inherited ability and the ‘dark place’ concept) and appreciated the unique spin Britney has on it. 
Although I understand that this is a YA book and we learn about the system of time travel through what Eilam has learned from his grandfather, I would’ve loved to understand more about the nature of time travelling in this universe and how that ability could be inherited genetically. Partly due to this lack of explanation of the time travel system, I felt Eilam and Hylee’s relationship and connection felt a little rushed, which did take me out of the immersion a bit towards the end.

Overall, I loved this book and would recommend it to others looking for an unsettling YA horror/magical realism type read. It definitely isn’t quite the same, but the feelings this inspired in me reminded me of watching the Fear Street trilogy, and they are some of my all-time favourite films. Britney’s writing creates such a vivid and tense picture, and the depiction of complex childhood trauma and how that affected Hylee made me feel so deeply understood. I will definitely be reading Britney’s first work and eagerly anticipating whatever she creates next!
Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for the Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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