Dark books
Books with dark in the title doesn’t mean they’re “dark” in content — although two of the three below are.
Out of any buzzword I’ve looked into so far, “dark” has yielded the largest variety of genres and topics.
Consider picking up one of these titles!
This book follows the relationship between a high school student and her teacher, shifting between narratives from Vanessa’s school days in 2000 and 2017, when Jacob Strane is facing several allegations of sexual abuse; the time shift show the links between memory and trauma, and how adults who have faced trauma shape their lives. This book follows the classic “Lolita” set-up: older, manipulative man and a young girl with a mature spirit. This fictionalized work draws from the author’s own similar experience, which she isn’t quite ready to bring to light herself. This difficult novel shows the web these situations take the form of. They aren’t as cut and dry as they appear, which is why they’re so terrifying.
I read this book a while ago, but I can’t imagine not including it here. Mcnamara’s book was a driving force behind the Golden State Killer being captured. Unfortunately, Mcnamara passed away before investigators convicted Joseph James Deangelo as the notorious serial rapist and killer in 2018. Mcnamara was a true crime journalist who became obsessed with catching the Golden State Killer – she’s even the one who named him such. To write this book, she used online forums, intimate interviews and police reports to piece together the details and track the killer. This book read just as chilling as any atmospheric suspense, and definitely led to a few nightmares because I read it too late into the night.
For a reprieve from the other heavy books, this novel using the theory of parallel universes, and chaos ensues. Jason is walking home to his wife and son when he is kidnapped. He wakes in a universe where he has no family, and instead decided to become a groundbreaking scientist. Jason learns he was kidnapped by himself because he regretted not settling down with the love of his life. Our Jason faces a terrifying journey trying to find his way home, without giving too much of what he knows away. The writing of this as a novel isn’t perfect. It reads more like an actionpacked screenplay, which was quickly picked up by a movie studio in 2014... Nothing has come up yet, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed!