Dark Things I Adore – Katie Lattari

Happy Monday! We’re nearing the end of the month and I’m trying to squeeze in as many more books and reviews as I can before October is officially here.

Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for the free copy in exchange for my honest review

DARK THINGS I ADORE – Katie Lattari (Released September 14th, 2021)

Book Description:

A psychological thriller for fans of Lucy Foley and Liz Moore, Dark Things I Adore is a stunning Gone Girl-esque tale of atonement that proves that in the grasp of manipulative men, women may momentarily fall. But in the hands of fierce women, men will be brought to their knees.

Three campfire secrets. Two witnesses. One dead in the trees. And the woman, thirty years later, bent on making the guilty finally pay.

1988. A group of outcasts gather at a small, prestigious arts camp nestled in the Maine woods. They’re the painters: bright, hopeful, teeming with potential. But secrets and dark ambitions rise like smoke from a campfire, and the truths they tell will come back to haunt them in ways more deadly than they dreamed.

2018. Esteemed art professor Max Durant arrives at his protégé’s remote home to view her graduate thesis collection. He knows Audra is beautiful and brilliant. He knows being invited into her private world is a rare gift. But he doesn’t know that Audra has engineered every aspect of their weekend together. Every detail, every conversation. Audra has woven the perfect web.

Only Audra knows what happened that summer in 1988. Max’s secret, and the dark things that followed. And even though it won’t be easy, Audra knows someone must pay.

A searing thriller of trauma, dark academia, complicity, and revenge, Dark Things I Adore unravels the realities behind campfire legends―the horrors that happen in the dark, the girls who become cautionary tales, and the guilty who go unpunished. Until now.

My Thoughts: 3/5 stars

I think that books need to stop being compared to GONE GIRL in their synopses and descriptions. I think this sets a certain expectation that is typically very hard to meet for the seasoned thriller reader and it almost ruins any kind of twist that the author throws at us because we’re just waiting and waiting for that gut punch shocking twist like in GONE GIRL. So when going into DARK THINGS I ADORE, try to get that out of your mind because I feel that you’ll enjoy this a whole lot more! This is still a solid suspense read with dual timelines and good character development. There were some slower parts towards the beginning and I found myself much more interested in the 2018 timeline versus the 1988 one. I have seen plenty of glowing 5 star reviews out there, so don’t let this deter you! There were just a few things that didn’t completely work for me but I will for sure give Lattari another read in the future.