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Book Reviewed by:From Gillian Flynn Books, a lyrical young adult 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.
Growing up in Slater, Isadora Chang never felt at ease in the repressive small town, even before she realized she was bisexual―but after the deaths of two childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. So, Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too. Even though it meant leaving everything she knew behind, including her last surviving friend, Mason.
When Isa's abusive father dies, however, she agrees to come back from art school just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: their friends were murdered by an evil that haunts the town, and he needs Isa to help stop it―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 again.
Wen-yi Lee's young adult debut is an intimate and gripping exploration of trauma, healing, and the lasting power of friendship, as a runaway teen must finally face the sinister forces that defined her childhood, and in doing so, demand her right to survive.
Isadora returns from art school to Slater, the mining town where she grew up, to attend the funeral of her abusive father, and it's immediately clear that she doesn't relish this homecoming: as soon as she steps out of the car, she refers to "Slater winter smothering me like a friend," a nice bit of description that says a lot about how she feels about Slater and even more about how she feels about friends. There is no shortage of narratives about trauma these days — especially horror narratives — and the broad strokes of this story may seem a bit familiar at first glance. And sometimes Lee bluntly states something that could have been made richer with imagery ("for most of our childhood, the four of us were inseparable") or gives her characters on-the-nose dialogue ("I can't afford to be not normal"). What she excels at, though, is something just as important: the well-chosen detail. The absence of a Bible on the mantelpiece represents how the house breathes easier without a malignant father. A lingering scent suggests his influence hasn't gone away as quickly as Isa, her mother, and her sister hoped it would...continued
Full Review
(509 words)
(Reviewed by Joe Hoeffner).
What does one name a fictional small town that once served as a hub for slate mining before its inevitable decline? Well, Slater, of course. In her novel The Dark We Know, Wen-yi Lee describes it as "an old mining town sunk in a crater at the end of the road with nowhere to go beyond it but down." Isadora Chang dreads returning there for reasons beyond post-industrial malaise, but the town's condition certainly doesn't help: it is is only kept afloat by the support of the wealthy Vandersteens, and even then just barely.
Lee never explicitly states where in the United States Slater is located, but a little knowledge of the American slate mining industry helps narrow it down. In the 19th century, slate was commonly made into roofing ...
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Andrew Joseph White, New York Times bestselling author of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth and Hell Followed With Us
The Dark We Know is a book made of shattered rock, claustrophobic family pressure, and the desperation of children trying to survive the weight of their grief. An eerie, introspective, and beautifully atmospheric addition to the best of YA horror lit.
