Dark Things I Adore by Katie Lattari
I would like to thank Sarah from Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – Out Now
Price – £8.99 paperback £6.64 Kindle eBook
Three campfire secrets. Two witnesses. One dead in the trees. And the woman, thirty years later, bent on making the guilty finally pay.
1988. A group of outcasts gather at a small, prestigious arts camp nestled in the Maine woods. They're the painters: bright, hopeful, teeming with potential. But secrets and dark ambitions rise like smoke from a campfire, and the truths they tell will come back to haunt them in ways more deadly than they dreamed.
2018. Esteemed art professor Max Durant arrives at his protégé's remote home to view her graduate thesis collection. He knows Audra is beautiful and brilliant. He knows being invited into her private world is a rare gift. But he doesn't know that Audra has engineered every aspect of their weekend together. Every detail, every conversation. Audra has woven the perfect web.
Only Audra knows what happened that summer in 1988. Max's secret, and the dark things that followed. And even though it won't be easy, Audra knows someone must pay.
Thinking about thrillers there is a definite sense of the thrill of the chase. Not just the culprit being brought to justice but also if we admit to our darker side our suspect finding the victim ensnared in the trap that awaits. This is particularly relevant to Dark Things I Adore by Katie Lattari a dark atmospheric thriller of dark secrets, secret motives, and revenge.
In 2018 Max Durant is a well-known art professor. A once very famous artist who both draws acclaim btu also a tendency to make enemies and a darker reputation for a trail of women who have fallen for his charms and then been abandoned for the next adventure. Audra is the university’s increasingly prominent new artist on the block and Max has developed a relationship with Audra as mentor and tutor to prepare for Audra’s thesis Max has agreed to a remote trip to Maine and Audra’s home in the middle of the forests with a desire to commence a new affair. Audra aware of Max’s desires has though another aim in mind. Long ago in the 1990’s this part of Maine was where an art camp took place where Students used their nicknames and bonded in unlikely groups and one particular group implodes under emotional pressure and abuse. This comes back to haunt the present day with a vengeance.
This is a hugely enjoyable and compelling thriller and that is down to Lattari’s skilled use of character voice as we have four different narrators each telling their side of the story. In 2018 this is delivered by the intriguing Max and Audra. Max’s chapters are brimming with ego and a desire to satisfy only himself. You quickly gauge the measure of the man and find him repulsive but his lavish descriptions of things and use of language brings a darker tone as we find out what he has in mind. Audra is someone we feel a lot more focused and the duality of what she says to Max and her real feelings about the man is an interesting look behind the scenes of a character’s motivations, but Lattari keeps us guessing as to why. It’s a refreshing game of cat and mouse where both characters think they are the cat and as the two settle alone in the middle of nowhere the tension rises and each feels the pressure as their plans start to get side-tracked.
For the 1990s we have two very different narrators. Juniper is an art teacher at the camp. We see her as someone who uses the camp as a salvation from her messy life outside and she initially sees the gang as her brothers and sisters. Especially the grumpy feuding Moss and Mantis (none use their real names) but the arrival of a local woman they call Coral in camp upsets that dynamic. This sets in motion a pressure cooker of stress and eventually we find abuse. The extent of the games being played with characters comes across in Coral’s more fragmented notes an eerie mis of diary, poetry and song that shows a woman ever increasing fragment under pressures both in her family and the camp. Lattari highlights the issues of abusers exercising control and handles the issue carefully, but this becomes uncomfortable as we in Juniper are passive observers with little ability to stop what we know will have implications in the future.
The plot of the novel is very well delivered and suiting the use of artists as main characters we get imagery in paintings, photographs and even little live pieces all designed to convey character states or provoke reactions and as the reader starts to unpeel the mystery, we too understand the symbolism and eventually the depth of Max’s ego that consumes everything for itself. Lattari uses the Maine woods at night to create an atmosphere of isolation and tension beautifully as in the final chapters it is just Audra and Max focused on their endgames a wonderful example of keeping tensions running all the way through.
Dark Things I Adore is a fascinating thriller that deals with difficult subjects sensitively and delivers this through the use of compelling characters and atmosphere of threat and rising danger. The ending is both haunting and satisfying. Definitely an author I will keep my eyes peeled for in the future and highly recommended for a dark autumn night’s reading.
