Darkness Hides by J.C. Gatlin {Book Review}

Darkness Hides isn’t just the title of this puzzling mystery; it has a special meaning to the Kate, her sister, and her nephew.

Disclosure: I received this book to review through iRead Book Tours, I have volunteered to share my review and all the opinions are 100% my own.

Someone she knows is watching.
Someone she knows is stalking.
And something hides in the darkness.

With a Category 4 hurricane about to make landfall, boat safety instructor Kate Parks is running out of time. Bodies are piling up–and they’re not from the raging storm. An injury may have ended her career as a Fish and Wildlife officer, but nothing can keep her away from the investigation.

And it doesn’t take long for her to see that the clues have one thing in common: a connection to the recent death of her five-year-old nephew.

In a brewing storm of rage, guilt, and family secrets, Kate fights to protect her grieving sister just as the hurricane threatens everything she knows and loves. But before her world is completely ravaged, she must uncover one final truth:

Run from the water.
Hide from the wind.
Flee from the shadows where a weeper seeks revenge.

Buy the Book: Amazon.com, Sun Bury Press
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Darkness Hides did not waste any time pulling me into the mystery from the first chapter. I did find it sort of slowed down after that, but when the pieces started to fall into place; my attention was grabbed again.

I felt the story was a winding puzzle with various characters that came and went and came back again, but if you pay close enough attention, you will pick up on the clues. The clues were subtle. They weren’t all necessarily pointed out as “clues” per se, but if you paid attention, you picked up on them. A few of them, I would piece together the same time Kate did, and I joined her on this puzzling journey to figure out how everything was linked together and who was behind the madness.

This was unlike mysteries I usually read. I felt like this was absolutely a puzzle with pieces fitting just in the right spot. A lot of questioning what was happening; questioning the characters and their motives.

There were so many unique characters with such unique personalities, issues, and troubling behavior; you couldn’t help but feel like everyone was a suspect at one point or another. Additionally, the writing left a lot of questions that made you wonder as well.

JC Gatlin did an amazing job with the entire story, characters, mystery. I will definitely be seeking out more of his mysteries to read!

Meet the Author

JC Gatlin lives in Tampa, Florida, and writes mystery novels that include sunny Florida locales and quirky locals as characters. His last novel, H_NGM_N: Murder is the Word, won the coveted Florida Royal Palm Literary Award for Best Mystery in 2019. He is active in the Florida Writer’s Association and is a board member on the Florida Writer’s Foundation, a charity organization that fights illiteracy.

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