Dark Things I Adore
Ratings3
Average rating4
15
Ratings3
Average rating4
"[C]areful and sinewy plotting, which reveals in chilling detail who gets to make art, and who gets subsumed in the process."—New York Times Book Review A debut 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 psychological 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. "A smart, nuanced exploration of victims and villains, inspiration and theft, and the intersection of these things, in every artist. Pay attention to Katie Lattari. She's the real deal."—Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors
Reviews with the most likes.
A very dark story set at a graduate art institute in Washington DC and in the woods of Maine. It's told in two time frames; one in the summer and fall of 1988 at an artist's camp in Maine and one in the fall of 2018 as Audra Colfax, a degree candidate at the art institute prepares to defend her thesis. There are also descriptions of art pieces submitted by Audra Colfax for her thesis.
The story centers around an artistically gifted young woman with bipolar disorder, and characters who either exploit and abuse her or are complicit in her abuse. There's an implication that the complicity extends to degree granting art departments, since the people involved in the story go on to become art professors. All these issues are present in a well-written page-turner of a suspense novel. You know something terrible has happened and is going to happen, but you don't know exactly what and you can't look away until you find out.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This was probably one of my favorite reads so far this year. I thought it was phenomenally well written and well paced. The plot was captivating and kept me engaged throughout. The characters were intriguing. Not a one of them likable, but I don't think we were meant to like them.
