Dark Is When The Devil Comes, by Daisy Pearce
The Book
Synopsis:
Hazel, a twenty-nine-year-old mycologist - someone who studies mushrooms - swallows her shame and returns to her parent's home after a traumatic divorce. To start rebuilding, she takes the plunge and calls her estranged sister, Cathy, and organises to meet up; she also bumps into Suzie, an old school friend with whom she shares a terrible childhood secret.
But then Hazel meets Andrew, who claims to have rare, hallucinogenic mushrooms growing in his old farmhouse. Lured out into the wilderness by curiosity and no little professional ambition, Hazel is trapped by Andrew, shut in the basement with no help for miles around.
As Cathy and Suzie desperately begin the search for Hazel, Cathy starts to feel that something darker and even more terrifying than Andrew resides in that farmhouse. But is the power living in the dark with her or . . . much, much closer.
My Review
Dark Is When The Devil Comes is a horror thriller novel written by Daisy Pearce and published by RunForIt. A story that puts the emphasis on building up the tension, while slowly introduces some more unnerving elements that in some ways reminded me of Malignant (film), but especially getting the most from its setting and how it contributes to the atmosphere.
Hazel returns to Idless with the hope of a reset after her divorce, even a fragile attempt to reconnect with her sister Cathy; but soon her plans get twisted, lured into the woods by Andrew, who traps her in the basement of a cabin in the middle of the woods. At the same time, Cathy starts searching for her sister with the help of Suzie, an old Hazel's friend that shares a secret about their past in Idless; the closer they get to the cabin, the more they will feel something even darker residing in that place.
Pearce smartly divides the narrative between Cathy's and Hazel's POVs, allowing us to learn more about the sisters while increasingly building a subtle tension that something is hidden, something we don't perceive, but that's creeping from the dark. In certain ways, they kinda share the same basis, being close to their own personal abyss, but separated by how they decide to confront it. Hazel's POV is darker, creepier, especially as we see how her mind is slowly cracking, and it lets something from her past leak into her life again; Cathy's feels more like a small town thriller mixed with horror.
The horror is well-executed, slowly creating an oppressive atmosphere, and doing a magnificent job of keeping you at the edge of your seat, but never going for the lazy route of a jump scare; even at the end, you are not sure if something was real or just the psyche of the characters playing with them.
The pacing is relatively fast, with each chapter adding something to the equation, making this a pretty bingeable book.
Dark Is When The Devil Comes is a great novel, perfect if you are looking for a more atmospherical proposal in your horror with a feminist touch in the process; a certainly remarkable novel by Daisy Pearce.
The Author/s
Daisy Pearce
Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Stephen King’s 'Cujo' and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.
She began writing short stories as a teenager and after spells living in London and Brighton Daisy had her first short story ‘The Black Prince’ published in One Eye Grey magazine. Another short story, ‘The Brook Witch’, was performed on stage at the Small Story Cabaret in Lewes in 2016. She has also written articles about mental health online. In 2015, The Silence won a bursary with The Literary Consultancy, and later that year Daisy also won the Chindi Authors Competition with her short story ‘Worm Food’. Her second novel was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Award.
Daisy currently works in the library at the University of Sussex, where she shelves books and listens to podcasts on true crime and folklore