THE RESTLESS DARK By Erica Waters

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Restless Dark by Erica Waters
Published by HarperTeen on 10/4/22
Genres: Horror & Ghost Stories, LGBT, Mystery & Detective, Young Adult
Pages: 400
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The Cloudkiss Killer is dead. Now a true-crime podcast is hosting a contest to find his bones.

Lucy was almost the serial killer’s final victim. Carolina is a true-crime fan who fears her own rage. Maggie is a psychology student with a little too much to hide.

All of them are looking for answers, for a new identity, for a place to bury their secrets.

But there are more than bones hiding in the shadows…sometimes the darkness inside is more frightening than anything the dead leave behind.

Short and Sweet Review

The Cloudkiss Killer died two years ago but no one found his body after he jumped off of a cliff, now a crime podcast Human Beasties is hosting a competition to see who can find his bones and win a prize.

Lucy, Carolina, and Maggie are our main characters but we only get the POVs of Lucy and Carolina. Lucy was the last victim of the cloudkiss killer but she was fortunate enough to get away, she thinks being the one to find his bones will help her finally move on from the trauma. Carolina is there because she thinks she relates to serial killers or something strange like that mainly because her parents ingrained it into her head that she’s some kind of awful person, I will admit she is quick to flip the switch and try to get violent. Maggie is a psychology student and she’s at the competition to try and get into the heads of people who listen to crime podcast.

Weird things start happening at the camp grounds so the host decide for everyone’s safety there needs to be groups and Lucy, Maggie, and Carolina form a group. Here’s where things start going downhill. Maggie and Lucy develop feelings for each other and they basically like to gang up on Carolina and snap at her. Carolina would question them and basically be the voice of reason and those two were so awful to her it was hard to read. Lucy was weak she was easily manipulated, she wanted to prove how bad that nothing affected her that it clouded her judgement. My biggest gripe with this book was the characters, it wasn’t easy to connect with them and I really feel like their treatment of Carolina was unwarranted.

I really wanted to like this book, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought we’d see more of them searching for this serial killer and maybe read what the podcast is like but I got none of that. What I read was people losing their minds because of the fog, a lot of gaslighting, and mean girl behavior. The ending just made me mad it didn’t redeem anything, Lucy was so wishy washy it was ridiculous, Carolina was probably my favorite but she was a little crazy in the head too, Maggie was straight up off of her rocker but she was able to charm her way into making people think that she was just using psychology on them. Anyway this book was hard to get through and it was not what I was expecting at all and I mean that in a bad way.