The Familiar Dark – Amy Engel

‘In other places, the murder of two little girls would have blanketed the entire town in horror.  Here, it was just another bad day’

Eve Taggert’s life has been spent steadily climbing away from her roots. Her mother, a hard and cruel woman who dragged her up in a rundown trailer park, was not who she wanted to be to her own daughter, Junie.

But 12-year old Junie is now dead. Found next to the body of her best friend in the park of their small, broken town. Eve has nothing left but who she used to be.

Despite the corrupt police force that patrol her dirt-poor town deep in the Missouri Ozarks, Eve is going to find what happened to her daughter. Even if it means using her own mother’s cruel brand of strength to unearth secrets that don’t want to be discovered and face truths it might be better not to know.

Everyone is a suspect.

Everyone has something to hide.

And someone will answer for her daughter’s murder.

 

My thanks to Niamh Anderson at Hodder for my review copy and the chance to join the blog tour

 

We are just two days in to the second quarter of 2020 and already I know The Familiar Dark will make it into my Top Ten Reads of the Year. It’s that good!

The story opens with a murder. Two murders actually and the reader hears the thoughts of the victim as her life ebbs away. Two 12 year old girls are dead, Junie and Izzy, murdered by person or persons unknown in a small park in a not so nice small town. As the blurb says “Just another bad day”.

The story follows Eve. Junie’s mum. She was a single parent, struggling to keep herself and her daughter fed, trying to do the right thing and to leave the demons of her past behind her. And Eve had some demons! Her trailer-living mother favoured Eve’s brother, Cal, but both kids had tough upbringing under her care. Eve’s tempestuous relationship with the local meth dealer who would beat her if the wind changed. So on it went with Eve striving to overcome life’s challenges and make Junie the best she can.

Eve is no longer in contact with her mother but her brother is always around to help if he can. Cal is one of the local cops, hard but fair, which is a welcome trait when compared to some of his colleagues.  It is Cal who comes to Eve to break the news about Junie’s death.

Eve feels she has had her world taken away from her and avows to avenge her daughter’s murder.

Amy Engel’s story is often harrowing, brilliantly characterized and one of the best types of story as it dragged me into Eve’s world and held me gripped. Eve’s driving determination will see her confront many the issues which have caused her problems in the past. Her love for her daughter is unwavering and she will put herself wherever she needs to be to get to the truth.

Small town stories always have the best secrets and the stakes seem to be so much higher for the players involved. Eve will take on Drug Dealers, corrupt cops, stake out strip clubs and meth dens and she will even face down her controlling mother.

I cheered her on through every page.

There is nothing more rewarding for a reader than a story which gets into your head in the way The Familiar Dark got into mine.  Brilliantly written. A “must read” book!

 

 

The Familiar Dark is published by Hodder & Stoughton and is available in Hardback, digital and audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07T5XP5VQ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0