The Whispering Pages Book Blog

Release Day Review

Such Dark Things

Courtney Evan Tate (Courtney Cole)

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Publisher: Mira (Harper Collins)

Release Date: March 20, 2018

~ Synopsis ~

I thought I knew him. He thought he knew me. We were both wrong…

Dr. Corinne Cabot is living the American dream. She’s a successful ER physician in Chicago who’s married to a handsome husband. Together they live in a charming house in the suburbs. But appearances can be deceiving—and what no one can see is Corinne’s dark past. Troubling gaps in her memory mean she recalls little about a haunting event in her life years ago that changed everything.

She remembers only being in the house the night two people were found murdered. Her father was there, too. Now her father is in prison; she hasn’t been in contact in years. Repressing that terrifying memory has caused Corinne moments of paranoia and panic. Sometimes she thinks she sees things that aren’t there, hears words that haven’t been spoken. Or have they? She fears she may be losing her mind, unable to determine what’s real and what’s not.

So when she senses her husband’s growing distance, she thinks she’s imagining things. She writes her suspicions off to fatigue, overwork, anything to explain what she can’t accept—that her life really isn’t what it seems.

~ Add to Goodreads ~

~ Excerpt ~

I miss you. I hate this place.

The text is from my wife.

My head falls back on the pillows, my hand grazing the empty side of the bed. The sheets there are cold. Corinne should be there next to me, her breath even and strong, her hair splayed out on the pillow, her warmth leaching into my body.

But she’s not.

I don’t know how she got access to her phone.

I miss you, too, babe, I answer. Um. How do you have your phone? Isn’t that against the rules?

They aren’t supposed to use their cellphones at Reflections since the devices are considered a distraction from treatment. As a therapist myself, I can’t say I disagree with that theory.

I had a bad night, so the day nurse is giving me 5 min to chat with you.

My gut contracts at that, at the notion that she has to get “permission” to talk with me, and once again I wonder if we’re doing the right thing. If I’m doing the right thing. I pushed hard for her to admit herself, so that I wouldn’t have to do it against her will.

But the idea of Corinne in a mental hospital kills me.

Are you ok now? I ask.

Her answer is immediate. Not really. I’m ready to come home.

She adds a smiley face, but I know she’s not feeling smiley. No one in her situation would.

It’ll be ok, I assure her again, as I have four thousand other times this week. I promise.

I’ll take your word for it, she replies, and if I concentrate, I can almost see the wry expression on her face as she types. Her blue eyes will be wide, her brow furrowed. I smile. I love you, Ju.

I love you, too.

I gotta go, she tells me. My five minutes are up. See you Saturday?

Yes! I answer. I’ll be there.

Who would’ve ever thought I’d have to schedule a visit to my wife within a two-hour visiting window? Not me. Not her. In fact, not anyone who knows us.

But it’s our reality.

I burrow my head under my pillow, as though if I tunnel far enough into my bed, this new reality will escape me. It doesn’t, though. The image of finding my wife the way I did, in a pool of blood and insanity, will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I’ll never be able to un-see it.

My dog whines two minutes later, saving me from the memory, her bladder having shrunk with her old age.

“Just a minute, girl,” I mumble. “Give me a few minutes.”

She can’t wait, though, and I eventually haul myself out of bed, trudging out into the October cold, opening the back door.

Artie ambles out and relieves herself, taking her time. She sniffs at this and that, and I know she can’t see what she’s doing. Her eyes are cloudy with cataracts, and she can’t hear a thing.

“Come on, girl,” I call to her, loudly, shivering. “Get in here. It’s cold.”

When she’s good and ready, she returns to the house, and after I feed her breakfast, I throw some clothes on. I go running every morning. It used to be for fitness reasons only, but now it is also to relieve stress.

Lord knows, these days I’ve got an excess amount of that.

I run my normal route, through the running trails at the park, through the trees. I can see my breath and my shoes crunch through the dead leaves drifted into piles on the ground. One foot in front of the other, pounding down the path, because this is something I can control. I can run and run and run, until all thoughts evade me, pushed out of my brain by the simple and basal need for oxygen. The need to breathe.

The human body is interesting in that way. It will allow your mind to play its games, right up to the point where the basic need to live overtakes all else. My lungs burn more and more. I ignore it as long as I can.

It’s only when they feel about to burst that I finally stop, my hands on my knees as I pull air into my lungs. It takes several long minutes of thinking about nothing but breathing before I come back to the present.

Back to reality.

The Chicago traffic hums in the distance, as people race to work, but I’m removed from it here. This park is secluded and quiet, tranquil and removed. It’s a nature reserve, and if you close your eyes, you truly feel like you’re alone in the middle of nowhere.

Until a twig behind me snaps.

Startled, I whirl around.

I scan the tree line and the moving limbs, and there’s not another human soul here. The wind blows and bites at my face, and there’s nothing out there but the sun rising in the distance.

I’m alone, as I always am on this trail at this hour.

No one is here, and Corinne’s paranoia has affected me.

I wasn’t alone, Jude! she’d told me, babbling until she lost consciousness in the ambulance. I wasn’t alone.

But everyone knows she was. The alarm hadn’t been tripped. No one had broken in. It’s understandable why she’s paranoid, after living through what she did so long ago, but the fact remains, she has grown paranoid.

She had been alone that night.

Just as I’m alone now.

Jesus, Jude, I mutter to myself, and I take long steps, jogging toward home, even now fighting the urge to glance over my shoulder. I’m being a dumbass. I take the porch steps two at a time.

My house is a mausoleum without my wife, enormous and quiet, and I hate it. I didn’t get married for this.

I’m resentful of my own thoughts as I shower and shave, the fog steaming up the bathroom mirrors. Corinne isn’t here to remind me to turn on the exhaust fan, so I don’t.

With her gone, I do everything as I always would. Something in my head tells me not to change anything, because to change things while she’s gone might set her back.

I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m not going to chance it.

I let the bathroom steam up.

None of this is Corinne’s fault. The very fleeting resentful thought that I had just means I’m a selfish bastard. I’m in a beautiful home in the suburbs, and my wife is in a psych ward. Even worse, I pray every day that she won’t remember everything that put her there.

Because I’m a prick.

I feel like even more of a prick when my phone dings a second later and the woman who sent the text is not my wife.

You doing ok? I miss you.

Guilt billows through me like storm clouds, through my gut into my chest. So much of this is her fault, this woman who isn’t my wife, and while I should stay far, far away from her, I can’t. For so many complicated reasons, I can’t.

I sigh as I head out the door to start my day.

Excerpt Three:

I count the ceiling tiles in the night.

The light from the moon illuminates the dark just enough to see them.

From down the hall, I hear screaming, but that’s normal here. I’m under no illusions about what this place is.

I hear the nurses’ shoes as they scurry toward the noise, and I look again at the ceiling. There are over five-hundred tiles. I’m not sure of the exact number because every time I count, I get distracted.

I’m so lonely, and I know for a fact that I shouldn’t be in this room. I’m a physician. I should be medicating whomever is screaming.

But I’m not a doctor in this building. I have no credentials here. I’m a patient, like everyone else. It’s a difficult pill to swallow. It’s a fact that lodges in my throat and won’t go down.

With a sigh, I roll to my side, and stare at the wall. It’s white and stark, and the sheets beneath me are cold and thin. My bedding at home is luxurious and thick, spun Egyptian cotton, one-thousand thread count. It’s funny how accustomed I’ve gotten to nice things over the past few years.

During my childhood and med school, I didn’t have anything. Now, I pretty much have everything. And in this place, it’s a stark reminder of the differences between home and here.

The biggest difference of all is that I’m here, and Jude is not.

It’s hard to sleep without my husband. In all the years that we’ve been married, we’ve never been apart. We always sleep curled up together, our limbs intertwined. No matter how little we’re able to see each other during the day, we always wear each other like a second skin in the night.

I wonder if he’s struggling with this as much as I am?

I’ll ask him on Saturday.

God, I don’t get to see him until Saturday?

What day is it now?

With a start, amid my rambling thoughts, I realize I don’t know.

I don’t know what fucking day is it.

How long have I been in here?

One day?

Two days?

Three?

Four?

The walls close in on me, getting tighter and tighter, until I squeeze my eyes shut so that I don’t have to see them. The only way to survive this is to just plow right through it. I’ll do what they want me to do, and I’ll breathe, and I’ll talk to them, and I’ll remember, and I’ll get better.

I count, whispering, the monotony lulling me into sleep.

One one thousand.

Two one thousand.

Three one thousand.

The last number I remember is one hundred before I drift into the abyss of sleep.

“Cunt.”

The hissing whisper wakes me, and my eyes open wide, and I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping. Minutes? Hours?

At first, I think I’m dreaming, but then I see the outline of a girl…a woman…in the chair next to my bed.

It’s dark so I can’t see her face, but her nail polish glints in the moonlight. It’s chipped around the edges. She chews her nails, and she seems so so familiar.

“Who are you?” I ask, a pit forming in the base of my stomach.

“Your worst nightmare.”

I sit straight up in bed, trying like hell to adjust my eyes to the dark, and in that one split second, she’s gone.

I scramble out of bed, turn on the lights, and the nurses find me moments later crawling on my hands and knees, searching beneath my bed.

“What are you looking for?” they ask curiously as they help me up.

“There was a girl in here…” I tell them, and they look at each other strangely because we’re definitely alone now.

“What did she look like?” one asks me as I crawl back into bed.

“I couldn’t see her,” I have to admit. “It was too dark. And her face…it seemed blurry.”

“Maybe you were dreaming,” one suggests.

“I wasn’t,” I insist. “I wasn’t alone.”

But they don’t listen. They turn off my light, and maybe I really am crazy.

I’m on edge for the rest of the night, watching and waiting for someone to appear, but they never do. My muscles are tight and coiled, ready to lunge out of bed again.

But I don’t need to.

She doesn’t come back.

I’ve got to relax. I’ve got to breathe.

I count my breaths until I finally fall asleep again.

The last breath I remember is number five hundred and four.

~ Links to Buy ~

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2BuQy29

B&N: http://bit.ly/2Ffmmee

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2D107mv

Apple: https://apple.co/2Fg8I6M

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2oR1D5z

~ Review ~

What a ride! It was most definitely a page turner and had my attention just from the synopsis. Courtney took me down yet another rabbit hole in this book. Corrine broke my heart. Her past slowly creeping up on her until she broke. Being separated from her husband who seemed to only want what was best for her added additional stress to her situation.

One thing I learned early on in this book was never to assume you knew where the story was going. Just when you think you know something the story takes another turn which will truly engage you even more.

The story is weaved so intricately that you are lost between the pages. I truly had a hard time pulling myself away to do "adulting".

Temptation can be a very strong thing and it definitely was conflicting for Jude. When conflicted he would seek out his brother Michael. Although he tried to resist spending time with Zoe the absence of Corrine seemed to override his thinking. Unfortunately it's his fall that adds so much more to the story. As we peel back the layers of the story and the actions that get us to where the story starts, all the pieces fall in to place leaving you with a gasp.

This book is told in both past and present day. With an amazing secondary character in Jude's brother, Michael. All I can tell you is that this book is truly worth the ride. If you like a little mystery, a bit of a thrill and not knowing what's coming on the next page....this is the book for you.

~ Rating ~