Review: The Hungry Dark

The Hungry Dark by Jen Williams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Narrated by Emma Fenney
Presented by Dreamscape Media

Some excellent creepy vibes, though a bit long and meandering for my tastes.

I liked the setup, with the kids going missing and the Heedful Ones haunting our sham psychic. It was an interesting idea and it had me instantly intrigued.

Sadly, I lost interest very fast. There's a lot of family issues that I didn't care for, and didn't fully understand, to be honest. I felt it was unnecessary and slowed the story down considerably.

Freddy with his podcast was pretty predictable and again, didn't make too much sense to me. It seemed a thin excuse to get Ashley working on the case of the missing kids.

It just seemed like there were a lot of threadbare ideas holding this one together, and it never quite delivered. There were some cool spooky ideas but then it was back to mundane things; the storytelling just didn't have the consistency we needed to be properly impressed by all the eerie happenings.

I did enjoy the backstory of the setting, and there were still some great moments that held me captivated. But ultimately this one fell short of fully sucking me in.

The narration was fine, but again I was reading at 2x speed without any issues because it was so slow and full of pauses. There wasn't a huge amount of characterisation in the voices, and at times Freddy sounded a lot like Ashley. It wasn't a deal breaker, but it didn't add much to the story for me.

This may read better on paper, but it's slow in places which takes away from the creepiness this should have held well throughout. The setting and story is perfect for horror vibes, but the story wastes time with people drama, slowing things down to a more mundane pace.

If you're into crime stories with a supernatural twist, this one could work for you, but be prepared to wait patiently for the best stuff.

With thanks to Netgalley for an audio ARC

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