THE DARK : THE ELECTRIFYING DEBUT THRILLER OF 2021

I liked many things in the book where Antartica was the setting with months dipped in darkness with a closed room kinda mystery. There were changing dynamics of relationships of people working in the book with increased number of murders. It was a whodunit. But the MC was quite a pill popping junkie and not too clever. She was given repetitive dialogues. The book was quite slow burn with a not so compelling motive. An okay read

I quite enjoyed the story but I just couldn’t get over the terrible stereotypes. The Indian chef and his turban who made a good curry, the lesbian who the author seemed surprised because she didn’t wear dungarees and was beautiful , the foreigners who didn’t speak perfect English and know random English phrases. I found this so distracting from what could have otherwise been a good yarn.

I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to read The Dark by Emma Haughton. This is definitely one of my favourite psychological thrillers of the year. It is the perfect time to read it, as the winter months are setting in. Set in Antarctica, Emma Haughton brings the setting to life so well, and Emma Haughton creates such intensity in her writing, and she uses this to help raise the stakes for the characters higher and higher.At the base where the characters are living, they are cut off from the wider world. It can take a long time for emergency services to reach them if anything goes wrong. It makes it more important than ever that they work as a team. When Doctor Kate North arrives, she turns up shortly after one member of the group she has been assigned to, has been killed. There is already a tense atmosphere, and everyone, of course, is still upset because of what has happened to their team member. Kate feels as though something isn’t right, and there are murmurings among the group, that there might be more to the death than first meets the eye. One member of the group isn’t prepared to let it lie. But is it possible there is a killer amongst them? If so they could all be in danger.Emma Haughton paints a vivid picture of how dangerous the setting is for the characters. We already know that someone has died out on the ice so this adds another layer of fear for the characters. I really liked Kate and how Emma developed her character over the course of the novel. There were some aspects to her character that made me want to find out more about her and what had happened in her past. I liked her interactions with the rest of the team, and she comes across as warm and friendly, although she does make some mistakes, even as she is still settling into life at the base. I really didn’t warm to Sandrine, who is the person in charge. I could picture Sandrine clearly in my mind and I thought the moments, when it was just her and Kate together in the book, were really tense.The Dark is the perfect title for this novel, it’s a haunting read. The writing is taut and it makes it very hard to put the book down. I highly, highly recommend The Dark to psychological thriller lovers. I’ll be reading Emma’s next book as soon as possible. You can definitely label me an Emma Haughton fan.

Cut off from the rest of the world, 12 murder suspects (all national stereotypes) and Kate, the new doctor who's addicted to painkillers! Oh dear, this was so slow-going, you didn't care in the end who was next to be killed, or who the killer was. The conversational style made it easy to read, but it got more disappointing as you neared the end. It lost all credibility.

This book suffers from the all-too-common curse of the Amazon free preview - a nicely written first few chapters that draw you in followed, once you have paid of course, by a much less appealing rump. There are too many characters that aren't well enough drawn for them to be distinct. The plot starts well, with an intriguing scenario, but the author doesn't make nearly enough of it. The book descends into utterly implausible action towards the end. That isn't even the worst part: a scene where the hero veers bizarrely from a failed tryst to investigation wins that award. Two stars because the writing about the weather and the location isn't bad, but that's generous.

This is a compelling in that I wanted to find out who the murder is. However, many things prevented it from being great thriller. The book goes down the root of an unreliable main character as Kate is self medicating with a mixture of medication, is slow on the uptake and has a real talent for putting her foot in it. The 12 other character are hard to keep track of and under developed so they are not memorable you have no real reason to suspect them. The reason for the original murder is very weak, if not none existent, really letting down the ending. Also the only way the author knew how to emphasise people's distress was by abundant use of expletives.