The Dark Hour

An ARC of this book was provided by Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op. And I’d like to thank them and author K.J. Young for giving me the opportunity to read their book

Mark Norman is an egocentric underachiever who feels his looks and supposed charm puts him above everyone else. He is hired as an in-home healthcare aide by Roy and Alma Walgrave who live in a large, sparsely furnished mansion in a bad part of town. Mark seeing opportunity tries to ingratiate himself with the elderly couple in hopes of being thought of in their will.

The only other help the elderly couple has is a woman named Lisa who begins to insist more and more that there is something wrong in the mansion. At first, Mark doesn’t believe her but eventually, he starts to have strange dreams of his own…

I consider the previous text a much more accurate description of the plot of the book than the one given on Goodreads. I found the original synopsis of the book written on Goodreads very misleading. I don’t want to give away spoilers but I just do not see the book as described there.

I read this book in one sitting and I have to say it was an OK experience. Any fan of horror books or movies should understand what the underlying threat is very early in the book which made most of the read an anticipation game. For me personally, I kept waiting for the inevitable to happen, and it did. And I was glad it did because this is one of the few books that I was rooting for the villains.

The protagonist is a very self-centered underhanded character who has very few (at least to me) likable qualities. The main villain however I enjoyed and sympathized with. Had the book been written just a little bit differently the characters seen as antagonist and protagonist could have easily been reversed.

While the book did a good job at telling the story of a caretaker doing chores for his employer, I really didn’t get a horror vibe from the book or find the evil characters creepy or menacing. No explanation is given for some of the stranger events which may have been planned but I have never been a fan of that. The one area of the book that I got excited about and that seemed to be the start of something creepy and exciting went nowhere and just ended as if it was decided not to go in that direction after all, but also to not go back and take what had already been written out of the book.

The main thing that kept me turning pages was wanting to know if I was correct in figuring out from the beginning what the horror aspect of the book actually was. Though I had little doubt, I was genuinely interested to see if I was correct or if there would be some other twist that I didn’t see coming. And if a book gets me interested enough that I care what happens then it’s done its job.

The Dark Hour by K.J. Young has an estimated release date of May 4, 2021.