The Familiar Dark certainly is dark, I finished it not quite sure if I'd just read it or if someone had battered me around the head with it. When a book begins with a description of 2 young girls bleeding to death you kind of get the hint that you're not in for a comfortable read. Eve is a former wild child, from the wrong side of the tracks who gets pregnant after a one night stand ,straightens herself out , leads the best life she can and works hard to bring up daughter Junie the right way. At 12 years old Junie and best friend Izzy,from a local middle class family are the victims of the murder at the beginning of the book. A grief-stricken Eve,not thinking the local police...including brother Cal are doing enough to solve the crime ,tries to find the killer on her own. What follows is a tale of white trash America as Eve returns to the roots she's so desperately tried to leave behind convinced that the answer to her girl's death lie there. It's a world of meth labs, sleazy strip joints, perverts, corrupt small town cops and a former abusive and criminal boyfriend. Eve's estranged mother ,like many of the other characters,lives in a run down trailer living a life of sex with whoever wants sex,drink and drugs and is the redneck mom from hell.
Like Amy Engel's previous book,The Roanoke Girls, this is a very powerful book with some deeply flawed characters.....to put it mildly. It's raw and the brutal nature of such communities is laid wide open, everyone knows who the criminals are and that the local Cops are bent but that's just the way it and like much that goes on it's best not to speak of such things. It might be grim but it;s also superbly written and a great story, albeit one with very few light moments along the way . Eve is a great character, many of the others are pretty awful but there is a glimmer of something decent that comes from some of them as they try to help her in their own way.
Gripping stuff, I hadn't intended to read it one hit but that's exactly what happened. It's raw,gritty and downright unpleasant in places but it's a book you won't forget in a hurry and Ms Engels has another well-deserved massive hit on her hands.

Thanks to Amy Engel, Hodder and Stoughton and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A masterful description of small town murder and the festering, open wounds of unresolved grief.

In “The Familiar Dark” Amy Engel has produced another masterpiece, in addition to her sublime “The Roanoke Girls”. This is a novel full of heart, albeit a dark throbbing heart full of fury unleashed by the tragic, brutal murder of two twelve-year-old girls. This small town noir opens with murder of Izzy and Junnie, best friends in the claustrophobic community of Barren Springs. What follows is more than the obvious mystery of who killed the girls, but the torrent of vengeance unleashed in the aftermath of the brutal slayings. The “Familiar Dark” is all about Eve, the mother of Junnie, a young woman from the wrong side of the tracks, who throws off her carefully cultivated veneer of respectability to pursue the killer of her daughter. The fury of a loving mother prostrate with grief is palpable in a novel full of the fiery rhetoric of vengeance, and its visceral evocations of loss. You could be forgiven for expecting the pages of this book to explode in a conflagration of flames, such is the power of Engels’s unrestrained narrative. Her words are full of heat and fire and the sharp angles of brutal, everyday violence in small town America. indeed, no one conjures the claustrophobic, insular, dark heart of intimate communities quite like Engel. Her characters always threaten to burst forth from the page; as if too real, too alive to be confined by the mere words that make up their fictional existence. Tautly plotted, expertly constructed and with a prose style as crisp as freshly fallen snow underfoot, Amy Engel has written another unforgettable novel that is surely destined to become a smash hit in 2020.

This was a very good story. Kept me reading and wanting to know what was going to happen, looking forward to reading more from this author.

4.5 stars.

”You had fair warning."

The Familiar Dark is one of the sharpest depictions of how a small town murder mystery should be written. Amy Engel's flair to create a dark, close-to-reality environment and tie it to a world of infinitely flawed interpersonal relationships is evident as she maintains the same somber tone used in The Roanoke Girls, her previous standalone.

In this upcoming novel, a mother's worst nightmare has come true, and Eve - the victim's mother - won't rest until her daughter's killer is brought to justice. And she’ll be setting her own rules.

While The Roanoke Girls remains the book that left me emotionally scarred, this one stands out most through its rather startlingly rattling conclusion, bringing an unforgettable end to Eve’s challenging journey of hunting down the killer in Missouri’s cold and snowy “Barren Springs”.

Amy Engel is a special author, her atmospherically-moody stories seem to continuously contain protagonists with distinct voices that makes the reader want to get sucked into their world and become drawn to them and their journeys. The Familiar Dark is a perfect example.

WOW
I loved this book.
Full of interesting characters who sparked emotions of all kinds.
The story follows the murder of two young girls in small town Missouri and the quest of one of the mother’s, Evie , to find out who killed them.
The plot follows the people involved in Evie’s life since she was a young girl growing up poor on the edge of town.
A beautifully written book which keeps you reading until the end.
The reader really gets to care about Evie, her daughter Junie and the family of Izzie who also was murdered.
It depicts life in a small town anywhere in the world and draws you in to all their lives.
Great ending.
5 STARS.

An unusual sort of crime novel that is not just about solving the murder but also trying the best to survive trauma. Losing a child is a loss that cannot be understood by people who haven't, especially in horrific circumstances. However, this book depicts the struggle incredibly well. Also is utterly excellent at describing dysfunctional families and how we can do our best to grow out of them. I truly believe that Eve would have succeeded at that had it not been for the murder. A fantastic novel that wrecks your heart.

The Familiar Dark is a brilliant book! After Eves daughter and her friend are murdered she tries to find out the truth and who could hurt two 12 year girls.

I can’t even leave this til the end of my review, the twist was fantastic! I had no idea who the murderer was and found myself shocked. Also the poverty in this book really helped set the scene. Very dark but well worth the read!

Short but definitely not sweet.
Having read the previous book by this author I had an idea we were going to be in for something dark,and when you open the story with two dead 12 year olds,you know it's true.
As fury unleashed Evies former self and she got closer to the truth,I felt myself almost wincing at the inevitability of who and why.
Another cracking read.

First of all, I would like to say that Amy Engel's book The Roanoke Girls was surprisingly one of the most interesting books I have read recently. Very unsettling but beautifully written, I started reading and couldn't put it down till the end. That is why I had high hopes for her newest book The Familiar Dark. The books starts with the death of two 12-year old girls. The main protagonist is Evie, a young mother determined to discover the truth about what happened. Amy Engel does not disappoint, this is another powerful and beautifully written story that I would highly recommend! Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this fantastic book.

Thank you to Netgalley for this advanced reader's copy. Loved, loved, loved this book. Devoured it in one sitting. This dark thriller dealing with murder, abuse and poverty, kept me engaged and wanting more.

Amy Engel became a 'must read' for me after her stunning 'The Roanoke Girls': this book is another example of her ability to take a well-worn format (two girls murdered in small-town USA) and imbue it with a far more literary edge. Here, what she conveys so vividly is the experience of growing up as one of the 'left behind' in a town where there are few jobs, where people live in trailers, where a 12-year old's 'room' is a curtained off corner of the living room, and where the growth industry is crystal meth and a move up to heroin. That our protagonist, Eve, is a woman of great dignity even amidst her grief and the sheer wearing down of her life is a tremendous achievement. Indeed, the characterisation is, again, beautifully done: the endemic overlaying of sex and violence, the stoic way in which the community still endures, not least the matriarchal nature of social organisation where husbands and fathers are routinely unknown or missing.

Amidst all this is the question of who in this small town has killed two girls so brutally. I'd suggest that if you're just coming to this looking for a murder mystery, this might be somewhat disappointing: the murderer seemed clear to me from very early on though why is a question that doesn't get answered till much later. And, I have to admit, I found the big reveal unconvincing though I can't say why without giving out massive spoilers.

Still, this is so much more than a whodunnit so while I would have liked something more convincing as the murder denouement, this stands up as a beautifully written book. It's harsh and abrasive, make no mistake, but is also a testament to female strength, and the bonds between mothers and daughters that endure under the hardest of circumstances.

The book begins with two 12 year old friends being murdered at the local park.. The narrative is told from Eve’s point of view, one of the girls mother.

I did find it quite a hard book to enjoy as I could be really related to the main character. The pain of the story felt quite muted in a way.

Basically, the book follows Even as she tries to find out who killed her daughter and the focus on family.

It's an okay book - I did realise who the killer was quite early on, but it was good as a quick read.

Thank you NetGalley for this advanced copy. I haven't been able to get into any of the recent books I have read on here. Gave up. Parts were confusing, i wasn't following, and wasn't interested enough to find out who the killer was.

A beautifully written dark thriller set in a small town in the Missouri Ozarks. The story opens with the murder of two girls, best friends Junie and Izzy, in the town's neglected playground. Junie's mother Eve is devastated by her daughter's death. Junie was the one good thing that happened in Eve's life and she is determined to discover who is responsible for her daughter's murder.
Eve has had a very tough life, coming from a family that was always dirt poor. Her mother helped run a meth lab and was prone to violent outbursts. Her brother Cal redeemed himself by becoming a police officer. Eve is determined to discover the truth. She learns from one of Junie's school friends that Izzy was friends with an older man and Junie had been desperate for Izzy to end the relationship.
Despite being warned off the case by the town sheriff - one of the many men who mistreated her when she was younger - Eve continues to dig deeper. She's a tough single mother who was fiercely protective of her only child and didn't want Junie to suffer as she had. As she investigates Junie's murder, she has to deal with people who hurt her badly and are hiding dark secrets from the past.
Her anguish at the death of her daughter is summed up in this stunning line: "That's another thing no-one tells you about dealing with death, how afterward the only voice you can hear is your own reminding you of everything you did wrong."
This is a relentlessly grim read which details the realities of life in a town untouched by the American Dream. Recommended.

My thanks to the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton and to NetGalley for a copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.

The Roanoke Girls was one of my books of its year so to say I was keen to get into The Familiar Dark would be putting it mildly.

For good reason it turns out – this novel is short but packs one hell of a punch, I devoured it over two sittings, one of those books you feel rather than read. Main protagonist Evie immediately grabbed my soul, a young mother determined to do better than her own, who none the less suffers the most unimaginable loss. Her grief, her anger is palpable, Amy Engel’s razor sharp insightful prose creating layer after layer of emotional resonance.

This is the tale of one woman’s journey out of, then back into darkness – the cleverly authentic setting is deeply integral to forming the people who live in it. The loss of her daughter drives Evie back towards those toxic relationships she tried to leave behind, her one focus to destroy the life that destroyed hers and took her daughter, every step of the way you are right there with her.

Deeply held secrets come to light, The Familiar Dark is full of very bad people who occasionally do the right thing and seemingly good people who hide their own demons, every nuance of human nature is here wrapped up in a hugely addictive piece of storytelling. The end, when it comes, is extraordinarily horrific in its reality and leaves you melancholy and full of feeling.

This was brilliant. All the way. Don’t miss it in 2020.

Highly Recommended.