Lit with Leigh's Reviews > Dark Corners

Thank you St. Martin's Press (LOL) and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. IYKYK, my reviews are always honest.

DNF @16%

BRUUTHHHAAA????? LMAOOOO. You may be familiar with my disdain for Stay Awake, but I always give an author two chances before writing them off. WELP. Adding another SMP author to the no-no list.

Like Stay Awake, this gave me forehead wrinkles. I've seen a couple reviews wondering what happened to Rachel's personality and even though I didn't read book #1 (duh), I can agree that she is insufferable for absolutely NO reason. I really have to wonder if authors don't realize they're writing these combative, difficult characters? Or is this a reflection of themselves? I hope not. Rachel was abrasive from the jump... homegirl needed a Snickers bar ASAP. When she threw a lil fit because the FBI required her to sign a NDA I holleredth. She dead ass thought the FBI was bringing her, a podcaster, into an investigation with no strings attached trololololol. Oh and then like 3 paragraphs later she'd like fine I agree to your terms without thinking it through. Make it make sense?

Two gripes from Stay Awake make an appearance in this book: random use of full government names and the repetitiveness. Seriously, who are the editors at SMP? We need to have a little chat. And this is from someone who got paid to edit, so it's not like I'm just chatting shit (for the most part). It's literally your job to recognize the author randomly writes Joe Martinez after calling him Martinez for most of the scene. You can't be this bad at doing the bare minimum of your job.

Anyways, here's some lowlights:

"Martinez hadn't left anything to chance." *1 page later* Nothing had been left to chance. Tell us one more time... was it left to chance or nah?

Rachel zoomed in on the security camera footage playing on the iPad so she could see what Bailey had written. She hugged with disappointment. The writing wasn't visibile due to the security camera angle and the poor quality of the grainy video. "A different CCTV camera got a shot of the message before Madison erased it." Martinez produced the photo. Bro why tf did you let her zoom in on the image and try to decipher that 400p image when you had the screenshot on deck? What was the point of all that?

He'd stopped writing mid-sentence when the guard turned back in his direction. Whatever he'd been trying to communicate to Madison was so sensitive that he hadn't wanted to risk it being overheard or recorded by a prison listening device. NO SHIITTT???? YOU DON'T SAY??? God I hate when authors think their readers are so brain dead that they need to over-explain something that is implicit.

He eats his lukewarm meal in the privacy of his car and listens to the latest news updates on the car radio while he devours the burrito and fries. You can't be dead as with this sentence? Again, editor, where the fuck art thou? Simple edit: He eats his lukewarm burrito and fries while listening to the car radio. Et voila!

"The visitor's sticker was issued to Maddison Logan," Martinez told Rachel. "You think that Maddison Logan is the missing camper," said Rachel, cottoning on. Here's your cookie for being the world's biggest dumbass.

"....They're trying to figure out how much of Maddison's freewheeling wanderlust lifestyle is fact and how much is fiction... It would be a fatal mistake to think that Maddison Logan is anything more than a carefully cultivated persona." *1 page later* "I'm fast coming to the conclusion that Maddison is not real... Maddison is an invention. She created a persona of a free-spirited travel blogger..." This is where I gave up.