Review: One Dark Night

Title: One Dark Night 

Author: Hannah Richell

Publisher: 1st January 2024 by Simon & Schuster Australia 

Pages: 520 pages

Genre: General Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers  | Suspense

Synopsis:

One night in the woods 

A party gone wrong 

A body discovered at sunrise 

He murdered her at the folly on their wedding day, left her body for the crows. They say she haunts the woods now, a girl in a white dress …

Everyone in the small town of Thorncombe knows the tales of the haunted woods where the birds don’t sing and a girl in a white dress roams, luring people to their deaths. But when a girl in white is found dead the morning after Halloween, her body carefully arranged at the bottom of an old stone folly, the community is thrown into turmoil.

 With a teenage daughter of his own, police detective Ben Chase knows how high the stakes are. Was the girl the victim of a party prank gone wrong, or does her death represent something more sinister and ritualistic?

As the investigation unfolds and the noose tightens around Chase’s own family, the only thing anyone can be sure of is that no one is safe until this violent killer is caught.

My Thoughts

Hannah Richell knows how to write a great thriller. I have read and loved her previous books, so it was with great anticipation that I opened One Dark Night that was released earlier this month. Instantly I was transported to a haunted wood with every shadow making you slightly jumpy. This is a well written and atmospheric story that is sure to have you frantically turning pages to a drama filled ending. The woods referred to is in fact a curved stretch of road on the Somerset-Wiltshire border that cuts through dense woodland near Bath. Hannah’s novel is loosely inspired by this locale and the nearby stone folly. 

‘You’d think by now he’d have a healthy grasp on how quickly life can change, how all it takes is one single moment to shatter a life or send it veering off course.’

The story centres around the gruesome death of a young girl when a Halloween party goes wrong. Hannah has written such a well plotted story with a cast of characters and a sinister setting that will lure you in from the very first page. There is a  list of suspects with the police conducting investigations to find the killer. The lies and secrets weave a web that leave you guessing so just when you think you’ve worked it out .... boom! Hannah throws in a curve ball you did not see coming. Fantastic!

One Dark Night is a suspenseful and entertaining read you will definitely find hard to put down. There are dramas with unfolding layers that will keep you on the edge of your seat and guessing to a suspenseful conclusion. 

‘Everything is so jumbled, so heightened, it’s hard to know what’s real, and what’s being magnified or manipulated through the lens of stress and anxiety.’

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.