Quantcast

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Lori Rader-Day's latest, Under at Dark Sky.

In the year since her husband's death, Eden has become inexplicably afraid of the dark. She sleeps, when she can, during the day and spends each evening holed up in her house with the lights burning. 

When she finds out that her husband had booked a trip to a dark sky park for their anniversary, she decides to take the opportunity to try and work through her fear. A week alone in a beach house at a park devoted to star watching might just be the thing she needs to get on with her life. But when she arrives she finds the house in question has also been rented by a group of six celebrating their own anniversary. Her husband had simply rented a suite within the house. And Eden doesn't want to share her week with strangers. 

Though some of the group encourage her to stay, Eden vows to leave first thing the following day - when she knows she can make it home to Chicago before nightfall. But in the early hours of the morning, Eden is awakened by screaming and stumbles out of her room to discover that one of the group has been murdered. Now, everyone in the house is a suspect and Eden can't leave until the killer is revealed. 

Under a Dark Sky proves once again that Lori Rader-Day has a true talent for creating page turners that delve deep into the emotion and psyche of her characters.

Eden is revealed layer by layer as the story progresses. She's afraid of the dark, she's a widow, she's trying to decide if she wants to sell her house, and this vacation is the first outing she's allowed herself in the wake of her husband's death. This is what we know when we start. And though we suspect things weren't great between her and her husband by the little pieces of info she doles out through her narrative, we can't be sure if it's grief or something more.

Meanwhile, the six strangers she meets are seen through her eyes. Two couples and two additional friends, all but one of whom attended the same college and are getting together on the almost anniversary of their graduation. But there are hints that something more is going on with these friends. As an outsider, though, Eden isn't privy to their history or their potential secrets.

I really enjoyed my time with this book and with Eden. This was the kind of read that I was able to just sink into for hours, retreating from the real world and becoming part of the story!

I want to add here that almost a year ago, I had the pleasure of attending a conference that featured Lori as a keynote speaker. I had just read her previous book and was excited to hear her talk about her journey as a writer. She was a fantastic speaker and a joy to hear, leaving me even more excited to read each and every new book she creates!

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Lori Rader-Day and her work you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Purchase Links: HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble


 

2 comments:

Kay said...

I recently read this book too and my review will be up in September. I thought it was very good and I was so fascinated with the 'dark sky park'. Never knew about those. Anyway, I've met Lori a couple of times at mystery conferences and she is indeed great - very funny, very dry, great to be around. I, too, will read anything she writes. Read her book last year, but I still need to read her first two books. Glad our experiences with this one were similar.

Hope you are doing well, Miss Becky!

Heather J @ TLC Book Tours said...

Thanks for being on the tour!