https://kyrosmagica.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/my-kyrosmagica-review-of-dark-room-...

I’ve been participating in the #redeyereadalong on Goodreads, and this is the last book in the series, read during the week 26th October 2015 – 31st October 2015.

I joined in the readalong with mixed feelings as I am a bit of a novice horror reader – I tend to be a trifle scared of reading frightening stories – but astonishingly I have found it really fun and totally enthralling throughout. I whipped through those pages reading five books in super quick, heartbeat time! There have been moments when certain passages I’ve read have turned my stomach, or left me hugging my duvet for comfort but it has been such a positive experience overall. So thank you so much to Chelley who blogs at Tales of Yesterday and Heather from Heather Reviews for including me in this readalong.

My overall favourites are without a doubt, Frozen Charlotte from week 1 and this final book Dark Room from Week 5! So the best were first and last as far as I was concerned!

My review:

Dark Room certainly started off dark and sinister and that’s a fact. The Prologue tells the tale of Walter West, a rich young chap, but don’t be fooled this, he is no sweet boy next door! If you are friends with Walter West and you’re young and pretty, don’t pop over to visit, well not unless you want to be viciously murdered.

In Chapter 1 we are introduced to the main protagonist a sixteen year old girl called Darla whose life has been hard, with a capital H, she certainly hasn’t had a fairy-tale existence. Her dad hopper is a drunken, hopeless fellow who runs from one unhappy experience to another. Her mother Sidney killed herself. Darla runs away from yet another bout of trouble with her dad Hopper to Saffron Hills. She finds that Saffron Hills has its fair share of beautiful people, is obsessed with looking good, and is home to the Miss Saffron beauty pageant. Not exactly a place to make Darla feel at home as she is a fairly plain looking girl.

There are a bunch of mysteries to solve in this book so at times it came across more like a murder mystery than a horror story. Though there are elements of horror in Dark Room, the visions that Darla experiences are certainly horrible, and this sense of terror is amplified by Darla having no control over these frightening and disturbing visions. As the story unfolds she starts to try to take control of these visions, but more about that later…

Darla meets with her artistic neighbour Annie, who befriends Darla and Hopper. Annie is a fascinating character too with a hidden aspect to her personality that is revealed later in the novel.

When more beautiful kids are killed Darla’s personality changes, she becomes this courageous kid investigating, trying to stop another murder from being committed. That’s when I really started to love Darla, undoubtedly she is the best character in the book, the one that you can’t help but root for.

Photography is used in a creative way as a device in this book, to reveal the next murder, but is also used to suggest the nastiness of the beautiful crowd. In one particular scene TJ takes a selfie with Darla to ridicule her and other plain girls like her. Natalie, Gabrielle, Ryan, TJ, Carmen are beautiful on the outside, but inside they are mean, unlikable, thoughtless bullies. That is not a criticism of the book, the beautiful kids are meant to be portrayed this way, a message is intended to come across. Beauty is more than outward appearance it is what you hold in your heart. The cruel message finally gets through to one of the beautiful kids, who eventually turns over a new leaf.

Darla’s friend Sasha is an interesting but flawed character. She is pretty but in a non-conformist, punk style of way. She is also quite unlikable, and comes across as pretty uncaring, and glib, until one of the kids who she is secretly fond of in the beautiful clique gets murdered. Frank appears to be Sasha’s errand boy, but even Frank has a side of him that is kept a mystery.

So a very intriguing story, full of mysteries, secrets, it kept me wondering, guessing… I guessed the murderer then I changed my mind, then I guessed again… Lots of excitement.

The ending was good but perhaps a bit far fetched so instead of a 5 star read I’ve reduced it by half a star!

Would I recommend reading this?

Absolutely, if you can stomach it! The murders are visually gruesome, made me flinch in parts but nevertheless I found Dark Room very absorbing. So go out and get a copy… Just don’t do any selfies for a while…

Warning: Not For Younger Readers.

My rating:

4.5 stars
( )

Darla is always on the run with her less-than-ethical father, Hopper. What Hopper didn’t expect was to end up in Saffron Hills with an old buddy of his who is quite rich. He “talks” this friend into letting the father and daughter stay in an older, unused house in the rich neighborhood, promising Darla (yet again) that he’s going to clean up his act.

Most of the characters are rich and fabulously so. Sasha is the town’s rich goth-girl, and Frank is her poor but best friend. There’s also the artistic neighbor named Annie. But really, there’s not much to say about the characters. Sasha is really a mean-girl jerk who plays the part of Darla’s friend, and Frank is a tag-a-long. All the other characters are there to play who’s-the-next-victim. The only character interactions that I really enjoyed were between Hopper and Darla. Their little family is majorly broken, but Hopper is a genuine character and I would have liked to had more time between him and Darla.

The story has a playfully modern urban legend feel to it. It’s the “pretties” in the school that start to get picked off by the “Selfie Slayer”, the teens that take ridiculous amounts of selfies and post them on every social media outlet available. So, heed the warning or the Selfie Slayer may come after you next! Mwahahaha! Ahem. Yeah, but the “pretties” do get ridiculous with their selfies (as extremest often do) such as before-my-bffs-funeral-crying-selfie (so sad).

The other side to the story is a bit supernatural. Darla starts to see through the eyes of the murderer. A bit cool, yes, but you only get a half-butt explanation on why she has the visions. I am defiantly all for adding supernatural elements to horror and mystery, but you still have to give the readers a reason for adding it in! Was she born with it? No. Was it something she’s had before? No. The truth just disappointed me.

On to the big mystery/killer reveal! Again, I think this was only a half-butt way of doing things. There’s no way a reader can guess all the elements of the story by just trying to figure it out on their own. There’s not enough information given to fully figure out the mystery. It makes me sad. ( )