Somewhere in The Dark

Exploring lives on the brink of disaster, R. J. Jacobs returns with another compulsively readable novel of suspense for fans of B. A. Paris and Mary Kubica.

Do the mistakes of the past mark us as guilty for life?

After a childhood marred by neglect, Jessie Duval's finally got it together. With an apartment in Nashville and a job with a catering company, she's thriving.

But all that changes when Jessie works an event where celebrities will be in attendance--including the one person from her past she must avoid at all costs: singer Shelly James. Jessie doesn't hate Shelly. Quite the opposite. One summer, she followed Shelly's tour everywhere. Only, Shelly wasn't flattered; she was terrified by Jessie's devotion--especially after Jessie was arrested. But after a year of therapy, Jessie understands what happened. She's not the same person anymore.

Jessie keeps her head down, but when Shelly is found dead, Jessie's troubled past comes tumbling out and she quickly becomes a suspect in the high-profile murder. As the police close in on her, ignoring other credible leads, Jessie realizes Shelly's murder will be pinned on her--the perfect scapegoat--unless she finds the real killer. And no one knows Shelly's life and inner circle better than her. But she will have to go deeper into the dark--if ever she wants to find her way out.

Title: Somewhere In The Dark

Author: R.J. Jacobs

Genre: Psychological thriller / Suspense

Paperback:  289 pages

Publication Date: 08/11/2020

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Language: English

ISBN: 1643853007

ISBN-13: 9781643853000

My Review

This psychological thriller begins with a shocking premise and follows up with suspense through and through. Gripping from the first page to the last, this novel is a page-turner and had me wrecked in under 50 pages.

Somewhere in The Dark tells the story of a young woman who has gone through the foster care system as a child and experienced extreme neglect - her foster parents kept her in a dark closet for over a year and she is now trying to integrate into adult life.

Jessie Duval has come a long way. In her little Nashville apartment, she has adapted to feel safe within her surroundings. With musicians sharing the apartment building, and the muffled voices on the other side of the walls, she manages her OCD around the daily rhythms of life.

Ms. Parsons is her therapist at the Community Mental Health Center, and she knows Jessie best. Though it is hard to attain normalcy and not feel different or ousted by others who know of her story, she is faithfully going to her sessions but finds Ms. Parsons curious.

"How do you talk about only being able to imagine the things around you, and never see them? When I lived inside the closet it was very, very important to keep my things organized so I could find them by feel in the dark. I only had a few possessions, so the world seemed tiny. But the space in my mind became huge. There isn't a good way to describe it."

In that time in the dark, Jessie became obsessed with the country music records of Shelly and Owen James, since all she had was a little music player. Later, this obsession landed her in jail after she was stalking the music band behind the scenes.

Today, Jessie is working tirelessly to have her life in order. She has a little car and works in the catering business always a bit short of making ends meet. Finally, with good progress and decisions, she is over the temptations of visiting Shelly James, but, when a catering job takes her exactly to the singer's home, she becomes suspect when Shelly James turns up murdered. And so, the suspense begins and throws this book into a rollercoaster of a ride with characters and situations that Jessie must weed through to prove her innocence and frame the real murderer. When she risks her life to uncover the mystery, she finds herself back in the dark, but that is where she is her best! Her amplified senses are what should keep her alive!

***

This book was so engrossing and broke my heart from the start. Jessie’s mind makes the quiet scream and the dark echo as she sees it. Such a visceral and disturbing experience and yet that is exactly what trauma is. I completely understood Jessie’s overall naivety and her thought processes and believe they aligned perfectly with a person coping in a world that is much larger than their own after such horrific events.

Not everything about this character was broken though. Jessie had an extreme sense of right and wrong and an inquisitive nature which led her to solve the case of the murder. It didn’t make her a hero, but it showed she had some real fight in her to defend what was right.

A side character that I really enjoyed was Detective Marion. He had known Jessie since her time in jail, since he was the one who put her there. Yet, he sees something in that young woman that makes him risk everything to solve the murder. As he is taken off the case, it is his ideas that nudge Jessie in the right direction. Their interaction in the novel was a very endearing addition.

I also enjoyed reading a novel in modern-day Nashville. I generally shy away from popular Southern-style fiction as I find myself simply not enjoying those. Though I live in the south, I am not from the southern states. However, the music scene in Somewhere in The Dark was of stark contrast and set a great atmosphere…from the little musicians everywhere on the streets, the bars, the restaurants, and the apartment buildings dreaming to make it big, to the successful rich and famous. The entire city is dowsed in Country music.

For a page-turner that is as shattering as it is suspenseful, I highly recommend readers to pick this up. I loved it and will certainly read more books by this author.

Happy Reading