Getting the gang back together…a common, well-trod theme in fiction is how Wen-yi Lee’s debut novel, The Dark We Know begins. Isadora Chang reluctantly returns home after the death of her abusive father. When she gets back home, the past she tried to escape snares her in its grasp. Isa left two years prior on an art scholarship, but the dark images she’s been conjuring pose a bit of a problem, so her professor grants her an extension. So maybe she can use the time in a different environment can help her refocus her art.
From Gillian Flynn Books, a lyrical YA horror by debut author Wen-yi Lee that’s perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting, Stephen King’s IT, and The Haunting of Hill House.
Art student Isadora Chang swore never to return to Slater. Growing up, Isa never felt at ease in the repressive former mining town, even before she realized she was bisexual—but after the deaths of two of her childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too, even though it meant leaving behind everything she knew, including her last surviving friend Mason.
When Isa’s abusive father kicks the bucket, she agrees to come back just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason, son of the local medium, turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: their friends were murdered by a supernatural entity, and he needs Isa to help stop the evil—before it takes anyone else.
When Isa begins to hear strange songs on the wind, and eerie artwork fills her sketchbook that she can’t recall drawing, she’s forced to stop running and confront her past. Because something is waiting in the shadows of Slater’s valleys, something that feeds on the pain and heartbreak of its children. Whatever it is, it knows Isa’s back… and it won’t let her escape twice.
It is not only her father’s death that opens the novel, but the disappearance and likely death of Isa’s friends are a cloud over Slater and Isa. Suffice it to say, death permeates this novel. Isa tries to keep herself at a distance from the town she left and remain close to her sister Trisha, to many uncomfortable memories beyond even her abusive father cloud her past. Those memories include a haunting song she heard as a young girl, but she begins to hear upon her return to Slater.
Isa eventually relents and finds herself reconnecting with Mason Kane, the other survivor of their friend group, though that’s largely due to one of their other peers disappears. This young lady, Paige Vandersteen, just happens to be from one of the richest family in town. They both realize they have a mystery on their hands that is likely tied into the dark past of the town of Slater as well as the suicides of their two friends (Wren and Zach) back when Isa lived in town. Slater is a mining town, a town with history and like many fictional mining towns (and probably real mining towns), the people who own the mines are the richest and there’s often a dark tale in the past associated with the mine.
As Isa and Mason dig deeper into Paige’s disappearance, they begin to uncover darker secrets of the town and how Isa and her family might be connected to the darkness.
Lee packs a wallop into this novel. Within the pages of this haunting story, Lee also brings to light gender / sexuality / race to the fore, Isa is a Chinese-American bisexual girl who happened to realize she was bisexual just before their friend died. One of Isa’s friends is gender-fluid, much to the dismay of their stodgy rich family. What makes the novel work so well is that these issues aren’t forced in any way, they are a seamless part of the story and characters, which is all the more effective.
Zando Books is a relatively new publisher and Gillian Flynn books (yes, Gone Girl Gillian Flynn) is one of their big imprints and The Dark We Know is one of the launch books for the imprint. A powerful book and a powerful statement from one of the most prominent writers in the world – a statement worth listening to and a book worth reading.
Recommended
© 2024 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | 336 Pages
Gillian Flynn Books | August 2024
https://www.wenyileewrites.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
