We can’t choose our family.  The phrase is meant to reinforce the idea of togetherness oftentimes in spite of the differences and conflicts that may (and do) arise within families.  While you can’t choose who your family members are, you can choose not to let them impact the person you choose to be.  In that way, fate is left to our own hands.  But what if the fact that you are a part of a given family irrevocably alters that fate? The blood in your veins a shade, haunting every action.  It’s this notion that Dark Places delves into.  

Dark Places is set during the rise of hysteria surrounding Satanic cults in America.  Kansas, specifically.  It follows the story of Libby Day, the sole survivor of the night her brother murdered their mother and two sisters.  This has made her somewhat of a local celebrity, though that fame has waned in twenty-plus years that’s passed.  Money is Libby’s motivation when we’re introduced to her.  Anything done in regards to the murders was done only with the promise of pay.  Weeks are boiled down to prices.  A few hundred will take her so far.  A thousand, that much farther.  Everything is put off, her mind only ever allowed to focus on what will keep her going.  Enter the Kill Club, a local group with a shared interest in murder cases, encompassing both the victims as well as the killers.  They’re the catalyst through which the very real notion of her brother Ben’s innocence is introduced to her.  After the promise of payment for her service, she agrees to attempt to reach out to her father and imprisoned brother.  

Libby tells us that there’s a Dark Place that exists within all of the Days, originating from their father.  It’s in their blood.  A mystery that Libby seems driven to discover the truth of more than the murders.  As her investigation of her brother’s guilt progresses, she is forced to confront parts of the past that shed light on the Days and the traits they all seem to share.  Runner, their father and Patty’s ex-husband, is the originator of this sickness.  A fact made all the more impactful by the bits and pieces given about him long before we actually meet him.  The more we learn about Runner and Ben, the comparatively little we learn about Libby’s two sisters, provides a steady source of information with which we’re able to begin forming our own thoughts and theories.  This becomes part of the drive behind reading chapter after chapter long after you told yourself you were done with just one more.  Flynn creates a pace that, once it gets moving, remains a constant until the end.

Being a family drama so focused on the members of it, there comes a pressure to make sure the characters at the center of attention are portrayed believably and in a way that allows us to spend so much time with them without wanting to just skip this chapter and get back to the character we actually like.  Flynn manages to keep each member of the Day family interesting.  There are chapters that felt like misses, but mostly they were able to weave a sort of self-contained narrative that I would only find the resolution to by reading the next Ben or Patty chapter.  This touches back to the start of these flashbacks being weak.  The slower pacing is different than what we’ve adjusted to or come to expect after reading the opening and following Libby.  Her outcome is unknown while we already know what’s going to happen to the rest of her family.  The build-up required for Ben and Patty comes instead from gaining an attachment to who they are as characters.  Once Flynn achieved that somewhere between their respective second and third chapters, it doesn’t matter that their fates are essentially sealed.  The enjoyment and continued curiosity is tied to a desire to find out why their lives turned the way they did.

The last few chapters fall off after the continuous build-up that took place prior.  While it doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to tie up every loose end and story thread with a neat little bow, it does feel like with the unknown used to fuel the story up to this point, something else had to fill its place.  Late in the novel, that something else doesn’t stand up with the intrigue of Libby and her family.  

Dark Places is a story about the Days.  Everything that happens within it, happens because of a member of their family.  They were each the architects of their own fates.  At the start Libby was caught in the crossfire, too young to make a decision for herself and the world took advantage.  It’s fitting, then, that she be the one to finally make a choice and discover the truth of January 3, 1985.

–DF