The Familiar Dark Book Review

by Catalina Bonati

3.5/5 stars ★★★⯪☆

The Familiar Dark by Amy Engel (2020) is a small-town winter thriller based in the Ozarks, which follows Eve Taggert as she sets on a quest to discover who murdered her twelve-year-old daughter Junie and her friend Izzy. Along the way, she makes friends, rediscovers old relationships, and begins to understand her estranged mother.

This is a story about unconventional, socially unacceptable grief, especially in the limelight. At first, Eve does not seem to be grieving her child or even questioning her death at all, yet it becomes clear soon enough that her grief has channeled into rage. She explores both the joy and horror of fury and lets this be her guide towards finding her daughter’s killer, both pulling people closer and pushing them away. Another strong theme in this novel is the impossibility of obtaining justice or dignity under the power of abusive men, which is a common struggle for the women of this story.

The poor Ozarks town (unnamed) has a life centered around a continuous class struggle and surviving with poverty. There is a lack of a direct higher class in this town but its presence is oppressive. Substance abuse and alcoholism are rampant. The novel takes its time presenting these details as part of the worldbuilding and character building, yet in terms of plot, it moves along very slowly. It also has some strange word choices and sentence structures, and although the prose is steady, it could have done with another round of editing. It has a good plot twist, but the ending is underdeveloped, predictable in terms of who, and anti-climactic. There is also casual rape in this story, which is not presented as such.

Overall, this thriller is short and good, and although it has a few failings in terms of writing choices and most of all the ending, it’s a mostly solid mystery that is a good representation of small town thrillers set in the winter. It is recommended for lovers of winter horror, Appalachian murder mysteries, and the Southern Gothic.