Gray After Dark, a review by Joanna

Miley Petrowski has taken a casual summer job at an upmarket lodge in the Frank Church wilderness park while she recovers from a serious injury and gets back into training for the Winter Olympics biathlon event. While out on a solo run, she is taken at gunpoint by a father and son duo living deep in the forest. Starved, chained and brutalised, how could she possibly escape?

When I read the synopsis of this prior to requesting it, I thought it would mostly focus on Miley outrunning and outwitting her evil captors, which is the kind of story I like, but this is all left to the end of the book – there’s a whole lot of suffering before she reaches that point, and mentions of animals being harmed that I really didn’t like reading about, although it’s not gratuitous. I liked the way it’s told from both Miley’s POV and that of her friend and training partner Brent – even though the denouement is fairly predictable. It’s well written and scarily believable, and the afterword explains how Kari Swenson’s story fits in, including the author’s outrage at how her abusers were portrayed positively by the media at the time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dynamite books for the ARC.

Gray After Dark is available now in paperback, ebook and audiobook formats.