Vivian Parry, a former actress turned theater critic crave lost herself once. It’s been years since the loss of her mother caused Vivian to lose control of her identify and she hasn’t stopped numbing herself since. When she isn’t leaving scathing theater reviews, she’s finding ways to make herself disappear from the world. When a local college student requests to interview Vivian, she agrees hoping to help her case for a promotion. But the disappearance of the student shortly after the interview, causes Vivian to launch her own investigation into his life and could lead her down a dangerous path.

I have a love hate relationship with unreliable narrators. I don’t HAVE to like a narrator to feel connected to them or enjoy the story, but I need some sort of redeeming quality to hold my attention. For Vivian she’s funny. She’s snarky and though she tends to self-sabotage, I couldn’t help but be drawn into her chaos.

I never fully bought into the story. On one hand, it’s different and Soloski writes from her own experiences as a theater critic. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure where our plot was going for most of the story and found the pacing to be somewhat slow. I honestly had a hard time buying that Vivian would take such an interest in a random student when she doesn’t seem to care much about anyone, even those closest to her, so the plot felt a bit farfetched. Add in a super out there / unrealistic ending and well, this one just didn’t do it for me.

I can certainly appreciate what Soloski was attempting, but as someone who is over thrillers of women self-medicating and being gaslighted, it fell flat for me. I did primarily listen to the audio and while I did really enjoy Laura Benanti’s narration, the pacing was too slow for the reward.

If you are a theater fan, you’ll definitely enjoy this thriller, but it’s a 2.5 rounded up to 3 star read for me.

AMAZON | GOODREADS |★★★

Here in the Dark comes out December 5, 2023. Huge thank you to Flatiron Books and Macmillan Audio for my advanced copies in exchange for my review. If you liked this review, please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my Instagram @speakingof.books.