3.5

I really enjoyed this book. It kept my interest from start to finish. This book tells the tale of an abusive relationship and the aftermath. It also gives insight into the life of someone with OCD. This book was very disturbing at times due to the descriptive and violent scenes in the book and at times was hard for me to get through. I found myself scared and checking my front door at times as the character in the book did. Overall great read and highly recommended.

wow!

What started off as confusing and boring because I wasn’t sure who was talking because it was going back-and-forth, I ended up loving this book and could not put it down! It was very suspenseful.

I used to believe that if I found a book easy to read, then it was a sign of a good book. However, recently I've been considering the fact that it's easy to read due to a less than challenging plot.
Consequently I found this book incredibly predictable. While I did appreciate the use of two narratives running concurrently, I found that it spoilt a lot of scenes which could have been otherwise suspenseful. The book had already mentioned how Lee had nearly killed Cathy because she was always unable
to escape, so throughout the scenes while she thought she was going to make it to New York, it seemed obvious to me that Lee would appear at the last minute.
Just from reading the blurb on the back of the book I knew that Lee would come looking for her, and as Cathy faced her fears throughout the book I presumed he would be unsuccessful in the end. Even at the end when Cathy received the letter it was obvious it would lead to Naomi's body; otherwise why would the location of her death have been mentioned in the first "diary entry".
I'm not even going to mention her friends, and how none of them believed her. Sure, I get that he's supposed to be charming etc, but if my friend got a new partner, withdrew from their social life, seemed scared, and had visible marks of their body, I would definitely have had a far different reaction than these characters. I know that the author wrote this book under the premise of none of Cathy's friends believing her, but I think there were too many warning signs that could not have been overlooked!
I liked the idea of this book, and found the topic of OCD important, finding it to be an insight into how tough life can be for suffers of this. However, ultimately I just found the book far too predictable to rate it any higher.

Not my usual type of book but loved it anyway. Really enjoyed it as I am interested in psychology and I also doubted the character at a point in the story. This made the book more real for me and after reading this book I see how situations like this happen in real life.

I would rate this a 3.5 - it was definitely gripping, maybe a little 'dark' for my taste. Overall, I tend to like books that keep me interested all the way through (which this one did) and even if I don't love the ending I will still rank it a solid 4 stars. But in this book the end really frustrated me- some of the choices that she made were just painfully dumb - and in the end ruined it a little for me.

Four years ago, Cathy was a party girl, content to go clubbing with her friends and hook up with anyone who caught her fancy. Then she got caught up in a relationship with the mysterious Lee and something went terribly wrong. Four years later, she's living alone and crippled by obsessive-compulsive disorder, a result of severe post-traumatic stress.

The narrative switches between past and present. In the past, Cathy is caught up in her new relationship with Lee, who sweeps her off her feet (although warning signs abound: he won't tell her what he does for a living, he shows up for their second date battered and bruised, and he sneaks into her house when he's supposed to be away). In the present, Cathy is a wreck. She's terrified of everything, and her elaborate OCD rituals, designed to make her feel safer in her flat, have taken over her life. Then a new neighbor moves in upstairs, and as Cathy gets to know him, she begins to think about getting help and finding a way to move on with her life.

The dual narrative is well done. It's obvious from Cathy's fear in the present that something awful happened in the past, but that past is only slowly revealed in the earlier narrative. This device kept me on edge as a reader and it was hard to put the book down. There's also a sense of dread in the present. Even when there isn't a concrete threat, it's hard not to get caught up in Cathy's fear. And then she learns that Lee is being let out of prison, which triggers full-blown panic. The two narratives gradually begin to mesh, as we learn exactly what happened in the past, and how it's very much a part of Cathy's present.

I enjoyed Into the Darkest Corner very much. The author's depiction of Cathy's OCD and how it's taken over her life felt very realistic. I did find Cathy a more engaging character in the present part of the narrative, but that's partly because the past version of Cathy was a little unformed, floating through life, not sure what she wanted and becoming a bit isolated from her friends. But this made sense, because it made her easy prey for the creepy Lee.

My only complaint about the book is that I found the ending a bit weak. It wasn't a bad ending necessarily, but it didn't pack the same suspenseful punch as the rest of the book, and as a result, it felt a little flat to me. Even with this complaint, I would still recommend Into the Darkest Corner and I will be checking out future works by this author.

I received an ARC from Amazon Vine.

This has to the most haunting read I've ever read. I found the end so liberating that I actually cried. I just...this book is going to sit with me for awhile. I'm almost sad it's over.

4.5 stars. This book is INTENSE, and is basically 1 big trigger warning. It starts with the transcript of a court case. Then a chapter of happy Cathy in 2003, then a chapter of fully wrecked Cathy in 2007. You *know* something awful happened to her, and the anxiety of when it is going to happen, then the impact on the current story lines... Brilliantly written, but not for the faint of heart. Readers beware, but if you can handle it, a really great story.