Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Picked this up as a freebie on Kindle ages ago, stuck it in my “freebies I may or may not get round to reading one day” folder and forgot all about it, till it was mentioned at a recent BookCrossing meeting. Decided to give it a go and I’m so glad I did. Excellent book on a very tough subject, domestic violence. Having survivied a violent relationship myself I did find it difficult to read at times but thought it was very well observed. Thankfully my own experience was not as harrowing as what happens to the book’s main character, Cathy, but there were lots of aspects I could relate to, for example, the whole idea of constantly being on the look out for the perpetrator.
I felt the characters were really well developed, except for Sylvia, who I’d almost forgotten about when she was brought back into the story late on. Lee made my flesh crawl – so charming, so clever, so brutal, so clinical, such a bastard. The ending was quite shocking too, I certainly didn’t see it coming.
Reading the author’s notes at the end, I was really surprised to learn that this was a NaNoWriMo story – just goes to show that rushing out a novel in 30 days actually can produce a fascinating piece of writing.
I’d highly recommend this book and am looking forward to reading more by Elizabeth Haynes.
