Cherry LaRouche escaped the claws of Darling, Louisiana at sixteen. When she is forced to return after her mother’s death, Cherry and her children move back into her childhood home where the walls whisper and something sinister skitters across the roof at night.
While Cherry tries to settle back into a town where evil spreads like infection, the bodies of several murdered children turn up. When Cherry’s own daughter goes missing, she’s forced to confront the true monsters of Darling.
Cherry left Darling Louisiana young and hopeful of a better life, with a husband-to-be, a baby bump, and zero regrets.
That better life didn't last too long or maybe never fully materialized. Now she is older but not a lot wiser, with no choice but to return to her childhood home with her two kids in tow.
This seems like a pretty bad move since someone is killing the town's children and it's not long before Cherry's own baby daughter goes missing, possibly taken by the killer.
I was fully engaged in the story even though it was difficult for me to like Cherry. On the one hand, she was a good mother but on the other hand, she made some pretty dumb decisions that grated on my nerves.
There is also some romance thrown in, by which I do not mean unrealistic gratuitous sex scenes that border on the grotesque as usually passes for romance these days. I mean literally, some things that were romantic until they weren't. And when the romance was over it stopped in a big way. It seemed odd to me that Cherry would want to involve herself in any romantic entanglements in this town. Considering what she had previously been through I expected her to be less naïve.
I won't say that the outcome of what happened with her daughter was entirely predictable, but I did have my suspicions early on, and they were mostly correct.
I'm not sure why I enjoyed this book so much, and yet I did. The town's people were alternately welcoming, and nasty, with such frequency to give me whiplash. I'm not clear on whether something supernatural was involved since it was never fully explained. Maybe I enjoyed shaking my head and rolling my eyes at Cherry while wishing she would make better choices. Still, I am going to give this a 4 out of 5 stars even if I am at a loss to explain what I just read.
My thanks to Black Spot Books
About the author
Mercedes M. Yardley is a whimsical dark fantasist who wears poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, and Nameless. She won the prestigious Bram Stoker Award for her story Little Dead Red and was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for her short story “Loving You Darkly.” Mercedes is the editor of the dark fiction anthology Arterial Bloom. You can find her at mercedesmyardley.com
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