Book Review: "Darling" by Mercedes M. Yardley

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this book.

If I have said it once, I have said it a million times - if you want to create a good horror novel with some serious fright, you have to have a simple storyline with very few characters. Why? This allows for the expansion of atmosphere, a better control of pace and a more intense amount of fright along with a nice heavy-hitting denouement due to the rush of the climax. Apart from that, you will need good character development and fleshed-out themes and symbols, these are secondary in order to help the reader make more sense of the story. What you don't want under any circumstance ever is thousands of useless characters scattering around the story making it more complicated than it has to be. Why? The reader can't get lost in the terror and nightmare of the narrative. The more you keep introducing characters and places, the less chance you have of letting your reader breathe in the atmosphere and key scenes. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened with this book: Darling by Mercedes M. Yardley.

Now, let's start off with what I enjoyed about the book to begin with something nice and positive. The concept of the story is brilliant. A woman returning back to her home after her mother dies in order to see over it for five years. She has two small children and she is a single parent. Obviously, the offering of a character as a single parent brings the question of the other parent into the story naturally. As the concepts of the story evolve, we get to see more of the struggles of single parenthood, especially where women are concerned. That was really it for the positives.

There were too many characters. In a horror novel, you want to keep your character circle small and well-developed. The more the reader knows about a few characters involved, the more they are attached to them, the more empathy they have for them and the more intense it feels when they go through some horrible things. Unfortunately, because the cast of the story is so large, even where minor characters are concerned, you end up kind of getting lost in a who's who. You don't really know Cherise as well as you would want to, but there are many characters whom I feel that if they were cut out of the narrative, it would not make too much of a difference. For example: that scene at the shop with a woman called Wendy, that could have very easily been left out entirely and not much would change in the story.

There wasn't must atmosphere and when there was sometimes it felt a bit rushed for me. This is more of a personal opinion. I like my atmospheres to go on for pages and pages, the longer the better. But these atmospheres for me, were a bit short and a bit rushed. I mean, in the pace of horror they are conceptually interesting and probably liked by a lot of people. But, as a personal opinion, it wasn't for me. I prefer the Victorian-length descriptions where things go on for ages as far as the eye can see.

In conclusion, I thought the story was a great idea, the character of Cherise could have been developed more by her past rather than her interaction with random characters who generally don't do anything for the story. But on the whole, I feel like if you enjoy horror novels with short chapters and a lot of pace then you will certainly like this one. It just wasn't my thing, but it is probably yours. Definitely take a read of this very different horror novel.