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A review by psychobillygrrl
The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz
3.0
I think this was one of the books I bought for Ron for his birthday or Christmas last year. He said he liked it, but when I told him I got it on CD from the library, he didn't remember a lot of details about it, which is unusual for him.
The story goes like this: Amy Redwing is a golden retriever enthusiast who founded her own rescue and is dating an architect named Brian. Amy and Brian rescue a dog named Nicky who seems to be more than just a dog. When they're around Nicky (or in Brian's case, when he even thinks about her), they feel hope and calm. They're also unnerved by things like realistic dreams, phone calls from dead people and creepy stuff whispered by autistic girls. The real "horror" element starts when we meet Amy's and Brian's exes, who have teamed up as a couple themselves. The two are unbelievably evil and have custody of Brian's 10-year-old Downs Syndrome daughter.
When I say "unbelievably evil," I mean it is stretching the plot to put these two in the same book together. The man is a big-time criminal of the sort who kills everybody who knows anything about his business. And yet he kept Amy in a comfortable life for four or five years before trying to kill her. Seems unlikely. And the woman is a blood-thirsty arsonist who hates her child, yet has refrained from beating or giving up the kid for 10 years. Also unlikely.
Speaking of unlikely, the hardest thing to believe in the whole book is the part where Amy BUYS TWO DOGS FROM A BREEDER. Amy, who is up to her eyeballs in rescues, owns only 2 dogs at the start of the book and neither were rescues?? Even if it was a little while before she founded her rescue, anyone that crazy about helping out abandoned and abused dogs is not going to buy her own pets from a breeder and then dedicate her life to finding homes for other dogs.
One more thing that rubbed me the wrong way in this otherwise-good novel was an overdose of alliteration. At a guess, at least half the sentences in the book contain two words in a row that start with the same sound. Once I noticed it, the constant alliteration became really distracting.
Oh and. The title has nothing to do with the plot.
The story goes like this: Amy Redwing is a golden retriever enthusiast who founded her own rescue and is dating an architect named Brian. Amy and Brian rescue a dog named Nicky who seems to be more than just a dog. When they're around Nicky (or in Brian's case, when he even thinks about her), they feel hope and calm. They're also unnerved by things like realistic dreams, phone calls from dead people and creepy stuff whispered by autistic girls. The real "horror" element starts when we meet Amy's and Brian's exes, who have teamed up as a couple themselves. The two are unbelievably evil and have custody of Brian's 10-year-old Downs Syndrome daughter.
When I say "unbelievably evil," I mean it is stretching the plot to put these two in the same book together. The man is a big-time criminal of the sort who kills everybody who knows anything about his business. And yet he kept Amy in a comfortable life for four or five years before trying to kill her. Seems unlikely. And the woman is a blood-thirsty arsonist who hates her child, yet has refrained from beating or giving up the kid for 10 years. Also unlikely.
Speaking of unlikely, the hardest thing to believe in the whole book is the part where Amy BUYS TWO DOGS FROM A BREEDER. Amy, who is up to her eyeballs in rescues, owns only 2 dogs at the start of the book and neither were rescues?? Even if it was a little while before she founded her rescue, anyone that crazy about helping out abandoned and abused dogs is not going to buy her own pets from a breeder and then dedicate her life to finding homes for other dogs.
One more thing that rubbed me the wrong way in this otherwise-good novel was an overdose of alliteration. At a guess, at least half the sentences in the book contain two words in a row that start with the same sound. Once I noticed it, the constant alliteration became really distracting.
Oh and. The title has nothing to do with the plot.