A review by akacya
A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui

4.0

2024 reads: 46/250

when mira and layla find themselves stranded in an unfamiliar town, they wind up in room 9 of the wildwood motel. they soon come to realize that this room won’t let them escape their ghosts.

small towns are the perfect settings for horror novels, so i was excited to pick this one up. i liked the eerie setting of the motel room (and just the town in general) and how this tied into mira and layla’s inner horrors. mira is haunted by nightmares of her dead brother, whose death she feels responsible for. layla is haunted by her feelings toward mira and how her parents would take this news. as the two struggle internally, weird things are happening externally, too (though this is mostly from mira’s side). i liked how everything was worked through in the book.

the audiobook narration was lovely, but while writing this review, i noticed that the blurb says this book includes photos by the author. i don’t remember these being described in the audio, so i’ll have to check my library for a physical or digital copy to see these!