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A review by paulabrandon
The Woman in the Dark by Vanessa Savage
2.0
This is one of those books that can only exist if your main character is a complete and utterly useless numbskull. Sarah Walker deserves some sort of medal for being the most incapable protagonist in recent domestic thriller memory. As the novel starts, she has just emerged from a dark place after the death of her mother. All that progress is lost when it appears she overdoses on drugs. Her husband, Patrick, decides the best thing to do is sell up and move into his childhood home, which has just come on the market.
Except, 15 years earlier, said house was the site of a grisly triple murder. Roll eyes here.
Sarah and Patrick and their two kids, Mia and Joe, move into the house. Sarah is determined to make a go of it, despite the house's history, which she just can't get out of her head. But there are unexplained cold spots in the house. Markings left on the walls from the previous occupants won't go away even after painting over them. But forget any ideas about this being a haunted house novel. It's not. It's a bizarre element in what is otherwise your standard unreliable female narrator psychological thriller.
Husband Patrick slowly but surely starts becoming a different person. Paranoid, short-tempered, close to violence. (And no, he's not being possessed by the house.) Patrick is clearly an abusive husband. He controls their finances (he makes Sarah use her mother's inheritance to purchase his childhood home.) He berates Sarah, belittles her, gaslights her, tells her she's not good enough. And for about 80% of the book, Sarah just puts up with it! Granted, she's scared she'll lose Joe, as he is actually Patrick's child with another woman, but it just goes on too long.
The book hits a holding pattern as we wait for the plot twists that we can clearly see coming from about 60 pages in. Patrick is mean and evil and controlling. Sarah finds way to excuse his behaviour. Daughter Mia is a complete snot to her mother, telling her everything is her fault. Rinse and repeat. The problem is that Sarah is mildly aware of her situation, and just refuses to do anything about it. It was utterly infuriating. It's not fun reading about a protagonist who essentially is just sticking her head in the sand for nearly the whole book. And really, even in 2019, when this was published
It was well-written enough to keep me reading. But it didn't offer anything new or original. It was very predictable, and that simply couldn't overcome the tedium of having such a clueless, useless protagonist who refused to believe, for far too long, what was right in front of her eyes.
Except, 15 years earlier, said house was the site of a grisly triple murder. Roll eyes here.
Sarah and Patrick and their two kids, Mia and Joe, move into the house. Sarah is determined to make a go of it, despite the house's history, which she just can't get out of her head. But there are unexplained cold spots in the house. Markings left on the walls from the previous occupants won't go away even after painting over them. But forget any ideas about this being a haunted house novel. It's not. It's a bizarre element in what is otherwise your standard unreliable female narrator psychological thriller.
Husband Patrick slowly but surely starts becoming a different person. Paranoid, short-tempered, close to violence. (And no, he's not being possessed by the house.) Patrick is clearly an abusive husband. He controls their finances (he makes Sarah use her mother's inheritance to purchase his childhood home.) He berates Sarah, belittles her, gaslights her, tells her she's not good enough. And for about 80% of the book, Sarah just puts up with it! Granted, she's scared she'll lose Joe, as he is actually Patrick's child with another woman, but it just goes on too long.
The book hits a holding pattern as we wait for the plot twists that we can clearly see coming from about 60 pages in. Patrick is mean and evil and controlling. Sarah finds way to excuse his behaviour. Daughter Mia is a complete snot to her mother, telling her everything is her fault. Rinse and repeat. The problem is that Sarah is mildly aware of her situation, and just refuses to do anything about it. It was utterly infuriating. It's not fun reading about a protagonist who essentially is just sticking her head in the sand for nearly the whole book. And really, even in 2019, when this was published
Spoiler
"Oh, no, my husband can't be a gaslighting psychopath," simply doesn't cut it as a plot twist anymore. Yes, he can, and we've had the exact same plot twist in 500 other books now!It was well-written enough to keep me reading. But it didn't offer anything new or original. It was very predictable, and that simply couldn't overcome the tedium of having such a clueless, useless protagonist who refused to believe, for far too long, what was right in front of her eyes.