This was quite an enjoyable thriller but I did find it to be a bit predictable in parts, I did enjoy the use of the two timelines which added intrigue to the plot. Overall I did enjoy it but would have liked a bit more of a surprise

Really enjoyed this book, found it was unique to anything I previously read. This has captured my interest from the beginning and been a book I have struggled to put down.

A group of artistic misfits are gathered at an art camp in the Maine and if you’ve ever read Stephen King you know that’s perhaps not the safest place to be. While the dark things of the title refers to their collective art works, this is a pitch black tale of vengeance and an event so awful it will have repercussions long into the future. Split between the time at the camp in 1988 and a return visit made in 2008, we have to make the connections between as we sift through jealousy, love, obsession, abuse and exploitation. The art works are multi-layered paintings covered with notes, receipts and other emblems of that time in 1988. The most disturbing aspect of the artistic process occurs between Moss and Coral. Moss is the painter and Coral is his muse. Already asked to change their names to something from nature, to give them distance from their usual selves, as Moss becomes more inspired by Coral she in turn starts to disappear. This poses question about the self in art - is the subject really as they’re presented by the artist? Can the subject become so confused by the artist’s of her, she doesn’t know who she is or what is real anymore? Moss’s possession of Coral feels almost parasitic, so as he gains strength and vision she is more and more diminished. This was an edgy, atmospheric read that looked at psychological group dynamics through the lens of art.

I have mixed feelings about this book.
Firstly it’s written in two timelines, which were easy to follow and distinct enough that I didn’t get confused. I loved the characters and became quite attached to them as I was reading the book.
The plot however for me was slow and it dampened down my enjoyment of the book. I also didn’t understand the art pieces and I was bored with all the art talk.
This wasn’t a terrible read but also not my favourite. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and author for a chance to read and review this book.

A very predictable thriller.

The different characters were written well and the author skilfully handled the time lines but unfortunately this was a no for me as I read so many thrillers, I have seen this plot before.

Good for new readers of the genre

Oooh I do love multiple POVs.
This was also set over different time periods.
I loved Max as a character (well I despised him but loved reading is POV) so entertaining .
Audra such a crafty one too.
Although I could slowly peice this together myself I loved the build up and the characterisation.

Whoa! What a dark and intriguing read this was! Vengeance, they say, is a dish best served cold, and this was garnished with sharp slivers of ice as cold as steel.

Let's start with Audra. I genuinely liked her. Her talent, her soft side, her determination.... this is someone I would have loved to have known, I think we would have been firm friends. Coral, not so much. Max, well. I found him spineless, brattish and weak, and Mantis a brute, with the brain of a brute. Juniper grew on me. Quite a crowd back in the day, I wonder - was it really like this at these camps and retreats? Count me out, if so.

I loved the planning, Audra's attention to detail. I wasn't sure exactly what had happened or why we were on this journey (it becomes grimly clear later on) but I trusted her, she was steadfast and sure and I had the utmost faith in her conviction. I knew that what she was doing was justified. Atmospheric and chock full of dark things, this is mot certainly worth a read.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for my ARC.

I think this was a bit more of a thriller than I was expecting and I’ve come to realise I just don’t like thrillers.

From the description I thought this would have a dark academia vibe which I love, and it was compared to Gone Girl, which is always risky.

When things get dark takes place in both 2018 and in 1988, with the 2018 period telling the story of a student on a mysterious trip with her professor, and the 1988 story taking place at an artist’s retreat in the same area.

I liked the multiple timelines and perspectives, but I found the whole thing a bit boring, overly long and despite being long and detailed, I didn’t feel like it built any tension, and the reveal was just not that interesting or exciting. I also found myself mixing up the characters and plot lines.

This just wasn’t for me and I really struggled to get through the second half.

3 stars

A combination of amateurish writing and tired plot twists made this disappointing for me, despite a seemingly exciting premise. There are a lot of novels with similar themes around and I wouldn’t recommend this over others.

It is  not often that I am left speechless by the sheer intensity garnered from reading a novel, but this is one of those times.

As a reader, I felt that I was one of those found objects, being painted into one of Audra's thesis canvas', you become woven within the fabric of the multiple narratives and find yourself spiralling deeper into the past, into a well of darkness and obsession which has resulted in the 2018 expedition to the Maine woods.

Audra Colfax, art student and enigma, is taking her 'mentor' (he does not really deserve that moniker as he has little to teach her) ,Max Durant to her isolated home, deep in the back woods of Maine, to see the progress she has made on the works she has created for her thesis.

They both have plans for each other, he feels she is about to reveal herself to him, in more ways than one, whilst she has eyes on an entirely different prize...

The tension and potential for violence is felt from before they even get there-Audra is driving, and stops at the last point of civilization before her homestead, and, the ephemera of hunting and taking lives inspires Max to buy a knife-not for a particular function but as a phallic control symbol, to show Audra he can be in control of his surroundings, even though he absolutely is not. It is such a gripping and controlled scene, a simple shopping trip for supplies which is deeply laden with menace and promise of bloodshed, it makes you feel shudderingly cold.

Interwoven with Audra and Max' narratives, are the testimony, the witness statements almost, of Juniper, a art teacher who spends a portion of her year in the Lupine Valley art retreat, miles from nowhere where those who can afford to, subsume themselves in their craft and create almost a Peter Pan-ish Never Never Land, where evidence of multimedia work is interspersed amongst the natural surroundings.

The students and teachers alike are given natural monikers, so whilst Max and Audra are stalking around each other for very, very different purposes, Juniper's story reveals just what happened back in 1988, and how the repercussions have led to this peak moment in which Audra will make Max pay for a transgression which he has probably not even realised he has committed, so wedded is he to his own sense of self importance.

This is such a pure joy to read, part of the pleasure comes from trying to guess what Audra has in store for Max, and which of the nature named people-if any-is Max, and what he has done . She shares her pictures, all intricately detailed and painted over scraps of notes, hidden around the Dunn family household by someone named C.D, in 1988.

At the center of the story is this burning flame of vengeance, earnt, harboured and fed for such a long time, against a man who exemplifies the worst of acedemia. He , Max, is a wannabe who never was-his opening scene is him demanding show space in the vaunted Polk Room at the university where he teaches, that his work should take the space previously inhabited by Andy Warhol. His sense of self-importance and ownership of glory is visible right there and then, arguing with the female Professor Switzer that his prestige has brought national recognition to the Boston Institute for the Visual Arts, when, in truth, it is the other way around.

For Max is an empty vessel, who uses his charm to tease the pain and suffering from the unending deluge of female students, using his self proclaimed celebrity to cultivate relationships and then, when he has the image he needs, he paints. He, basically, takes, steals and appropriates the stories of women by taking their pain and painting it. He effectively removes the woman from the story of her life and takes the credit. It is as it ever was, the sheer arrogance and prominence of a man's social standing passing the story of women off as their own.

It is like a macabre cross between Dorian Gray, where the adoration and attention of women keep the image of Max alive and young, and the Emperor's New Clothes, where those around him can see the grotesque caricature of him, standing there, naked. It is far past the time that someone showed him his reflection, life size and bleeding with colour, presenting him with each and every woman he has ever trampled upon. And that woman is Audra.

Whilst he has plans to bed her and raise his status by feeding off her artistic endeavours, transposing his status as 'mentor' into 'muse' (technically, he is not wrong) Audra has planned every single detail of this unforgettable weekend down to the minutiae of the room he is staying in. And by the time she lets him know exactly what is going on, the rolling rage which gathers as you read each page, is a bonfire of outrage, anger that hopes for Max to be incinerated.

It is a pure delight to be able to read and enjoy such an incredible novel as this, I am so very grateful to have had this opportunity to experience the debut of a truly staggering writer who paints her characters and scenery so very vividly that they leave an indelible impression.

Dark Things I Adore is a riveting, absorbing and profoundly disturbing debut thriller that revolves around narcissism, ambition, vengeance and souring relationships and is effectively a very Gone Girl-esque tale of atonement that proves that in the grasp of manipulative men, women may momentarily fall. But in the hands of fierce women, men will be brought to their knees. Audra Colfax is the star painting student at the Boston Institute for the Visual Arts. At her remote family home in the wilds of Maine, she's putting the final touches to her thesis project, Benefaction. It's ready for her advisor, the esteemed Max Durant, to come up and review on this chilly October weekend. He doesn't know that Audra has obsessively engineered every last detail of his visit. Or that it had to be him from the start, advising her, so she could get to him by doing what he does best. He has no idea she knows his worst secret and that's the sole reason why he's there. What comes to light, chapter by spellbinding chapter is that one grand, grotesque act of selfishness committed by Max as a young man, followed by years of manipulating women for art, has set into motion the machinery of his own fatal undoing.

A man should pay for his crimes, and no one is more deserving of revenge than the women to whom he owes his career. He should go into this weekend far more vigilant, but he's distracted, as always, by an overwhelming desire to have his own way. But Audra, who is well aware that he's a monster, doesn't know everything that simmers beneath his surface. This is an enthralling and compulsively readable thriller from start to finish which is full of toxic relationships and deviant behaviour in which the hunter becomes the hunted. It is a carefully plotted tale that well and truly flips the script and eviscerates the notion that a powerful man may simply apologise for his transgressions regardless of what they are and move on unscathed. It's complex and multilayered and the slow-burning start soon builds to a crescendo along with the nail-biting suspense and an underlying feeling of pure dread and unpredictability. Told in dual timelines that merge to form a scintillating but ultimately chilling conclusion, Dark Things I Adore is a deliciously dark, captivating read that is fraught with tension and surprise reveals, peopled by a morally ambiguous cast of characters and narrated by a rather unreliable individual. Highly recommended.

This is an atmospheric thriller with a good plotline and interesting characters but with a very slow pacing. It also has some chapters with notes form one of the characters which are weird and only made sense at the end and still they seemed strange and not really necessary.

This story is told in two timelines. One is in the present and there we meet Audra, an incredible talented art student who for some reasons invites her mentor, Max, to stay for a weekend at her remote family home in Maine. Max obviously thinks this weekend is finally the time she will sink into his arms and becomes his newest lover. The second timeline is thirty years in the past were some young aspiring students meet at the same place in Maine to work on their art. Soon you can sense there is a connection between these two stories.

The story, especially the one in the past, is quite atmospheric and moody. The one in the present radiates a more foreboding vibe. Because from the start you knew Audra is planning something bad happening to Max.

I must admit although the story is interesting I had some problems to keep involved. It moves so slowly. And I never connected to any of the characters. Max is just despicable. With Audra you can sense immediately that she has her own agenda. In the past there is the main narrator, Juniper. She is a realistic character. She is one of the good ones but still says nothing when she witness abuse. And I never got the magic that obviously surrounded Coral. She is a disturbed person and I guess people back in the eighties or nineties were not so aware of mental health issues like people are now. But still she is a weird character and I never got the spell she casts on to the people around her. For me she just was a deeply troubled young woman who needed help.

The story is a mix of haunting and boredom. While it has all the ingredients it failed to deliver. The story was too slow, the two timelines never connected and it never captured me. There are no “Gone Girl” vibes here, the narrator is never anything like that. There is not real twist because you can easily figure out who is who and how they are connected. I even expected the “end twist” because it is quite obvious. This is not a bad thing. Not every story has to shock you with an unexpected twist. But this book missed something. Maybe not a killer twist but something that made it special, unusual. And for me that was missing here. Something, that made this story unforgettable and unique. I failed to find that, unfortunately.

Seeing positive reviews for this book, I really wanted to like this. I loved the opening chapters, the dynamic between Audra and Max. An arts professor and his protege going to an isolated cabin for a weekend, with suggestions of them finally consummating their flirtation into a relationship. It gave me strong My Dark Vanessa vibes, but that’s not the direction this book went in. The 2018 narrative ended up dragging and lacking suspense. I saw the twist coming. The thesis excerpts were confusing and didn’t engage me. The 1988 narrative also didn’t quite engage me. I felt like there were too many characters and the storyline was focused on art and the artistic process. I think personally for me, I’m not a big art/museum fan so I just wasn’t drawn in. The 1988 chapters also had too many characters with peculiar nicknames; it was hard to keep a track of everyone.
Ultimately I guess this book wasn’t for me. I think my expectations were misplaced. I thought this was a Metoo book, but the themes just didn’t quite come across.

Dark Things I Adore is the type of book that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let you go. Lattari weaves a dark, intimate and extremely compelling web that almost makes you complicit.

From the very first page, this is an incredibly tense story. You shift perspectives in a way that feels unnerving, as you get glimpses of the darkness veiled just beneath the surface. The only way I can really describe it is like a trap is about to spring at any given moment. This is a masterclass in suspense and tension that is just unrelenting. You just cannot look away, even though you know nothing good will come of it. Instantly, there’s this predator/prey dynamic but the people behind each label are constantly changing. The underlying feelings and atmosphere are incredibly uncomfortable and unnerving. This only increases as the pages fly by and more and more details are exposed. I really loved how Lattari sustains this taut feeling all the way through, making it almost compulsive reading.

There’s this driving thread of art as a medium, an escape and a way of channeling your own experiences. It’s something that is so powerful and provocative and Lattari really digs into the entire world. All at once, it’s glamorous but also deeply seedy. She exposes the nepotism and exploitation that drives many of the characters’ successes. It asks what this gorgeous art can really cost and to what extent is someone’s creative genius seen as more valuable than human life.

In this way, I really loved the interweaving of Audra’s artwork into the main story. Every so often, we get these little snippets of her project, which ties back to the central mystery and allows us glimpses into a tortured psyche. The events enshrouded in her art and the unnerving implications they have add that extra layer of foreshadowing and duplicity into the events unfolding. Similarly, the way the different perspectives and timelines are threaded to is so fascinating and well-executed. You start to question your own complicity and Lattari forces you to interrogate your own position as a bystander, like many of the other characters.

Without giving anything away, I do just have to highlight what an amazing ending this book has. The entire mystery is cleverly put together, with plenty of twists and turns in store. Between the incredible tension and interesting character snippets, you get invested so quickly. It feels like you’re holding your breath for the entire finale sequence and Lattari’s writing is so immersive that you can practically smell the forest air. The ending also raises questions of what justice really looks like and where the line of vengeance ends. At what point does accountability turn into something darker and bloodier?

Dark Things I Adore is a bloody, vicious and vengeful story with a masterful use of atmosphere and tension that also allows for an examination of the true cost of artistic success and the notion of the tragic muse.

Dark Things I Adore is not an easy book to summarise, there are multiple narrators, multiple time frames, and even multiple formats as we get extracts from documents and small, almost disjointed notes thrown into the book. Despite the complexity the book seems to have at first glance it's kind of simple in one regard; it's a story about obsession.

The story is split across two ties. In 1988 we learn about the Lupine Valley Arts Collective, a retreat for artists and creatives nestled deep in the woods of Maine. This part of the story is told from the point of view of Juniper, one the artists attending the retreat as a tutor for the season. Juniper, whose real name isn't revealed through these segments of the book, gets to know several other artists attending the retreat, and forms a small group of close friends; alongside two of the staff, Mantis, the chef, and Coral, the cleaner.

These friends, united by their love of art, brought together by the man who created Lupine Valley, who has given them all nature themed names, begin to form a strong bond over the summer. One of these bonds is between a young artist called Moss, who begins to form a relationship with Coral that could be seen as toxic. Taking the young artist under his wing, he seems to become obsessed with her, uses her depression and mood swings to help inspire his own art. Juniper is worried about what might be happening between the two of them, but this is just the start of the drama at Lupine Valley, a drama that will end in tragedy.

Thirty years later, in the summer of 2018, we follow Audra, a young artist working her way through art college, and her tutor, Max. Max has been a big name in the art world in the past, a respected man, but also one who has a reputation for broken relationships, and affairs with his students. Max has come up to Audra's home in Maine for the weekend to look over her thesis project, and possibly, he hopes, to make their relationship a sexual one.

Audra, on the other hand, has other plans for Max. Having spent years crafting things perfectly for him, having planned out every detail of their weekend, having decorated and filled the house with specific items in order to mess with his head. You see, Audra knows a dark secret from Ma's past; and she's determined to make him pay.

The two stories in Dark Things I Adore weave in and out of each other over the course of the narrative, though the sections pertaining to 1988 do take up more room in the book. The two stories play into each other well, and each slowly helps to add more context to the other. There are times where something happens in one time, and we get hints at an explanation in the other. I think Katie Lattari plays a very careful game across the book, and even though I began to predict where the story was going around half way through this wasn't because she gave too much away, and she was still able to create an engaging narrative despite the motivations of Audra being more apparent.

It became clear in a general sense why Audra was doing what she was doing, I understood that she had a dark design playing out in order to get even with Max, but this didn't make the story feel any less suspenseful or tense. If anything it heightened my desire to read more. I wanted to know the small details. I wanted to see every aspect of what happened in the past to play out, not just for the added context it would bring to things, but because I had come to care for these characters, because I wanted to see what happened to their relationships and how it all ended for them.

Lattari was able to create some wonderfully engaging characters, and the reason for this is because almost everyone in the book was flawed. I'd be hard pressed to say anyone in the story was a good person, everyone does something bad at one point or another, and even the 'good' characters have something that will weigh upon them once all is said and done. The book raises interesting ideas over right and wrong, and if certain actions can be absolved if you try to justify them enough.

But like I said earlier in the review, the one theme that really jumped out at me is obsession. In the 1988 timeline the people who come to Lupine Valley do so to pursue their art, their passion. But even in this environment there are those who's passions go too far ad become an obsession. Moss, who not only finds a woman who inspires him to create beautiful art, but becomes obsessed with her. He begins to whisper in her ear, he starts to influence her actions, shape her as a person, and drives her to incredibly destructive places because she ceases to be a person to him, instead becoming the focus of his obsession to create the perfect art.

Coral, despite being a victim to Moss' obsession is also dealing with it herself. She comes to Lupine Valley not as an artist, but as a member of staff. Yet she was drawn to the job not because of a need for money, but because she wishes to learn how to create art herself. Over the course of the book we see her neglect her duties, to the point where she's basically no longer doing her job, simply so that she can spend time with the artists, learning from them, listening to them, and trying to be one of them. Even her artwork becomes hyper focused in one area, as she draws birds over and over again. It's through her obsession, and Moss' obsession with her, that her undoing ultimately happens.

In the 2018 setting obsession if rife too, with Audra having spent years building herself up to taking down Max. She's gone to some extreme lengths to do it too; she's changed her name, she's applied to certain schools, she's designed the contents of her house, and the woods around her home to elicit certain responses in him. Her goal becomes her obsession, to the point where it's hard to know where she will go and who she will become once the book is over. She's so obsessed with making Max pay that it seems like she's put little thought into who she's going to be once she's achieved her goals.

As the title of the book suggests, Dark Things I Adore deals with some dark themes, and there are times where the story tackles some heavy subjects. But, it always seems to be done with care, and it doesn't condemn or vilify mental health issues, and it doesn't glorify abuse. Katie Lattari manages to take topics that sometimes feels off limits and crafts a layered and engaging story with them, one that is more complex then I was expecting; and one that I'm going to be recommending for a long time.

4.5****

I hardly ever award anything the full 5 stars but this came pretty damn close!!

This book features camp secrets, a girl dead in the trees, and one vengeful women who wants these men to pay.

Max Durant, a has-been narcissistic and egoistic Arts professor is invited by his enigmatic and cool student, Audra, to her home town, expecting a lust filled weekend with his protégée. However, what he gets is something VERY different. Because what he doesn’t know is that Audra knows the truth about his fatal summer in 1988 at an art campus, where it ended with the suicide by hanging of a beautiful dead girl. And Audra has invited him there to make him pay.

I LOVED this. This was such a twisty book that I had to keep making notes throughout about my theories/hypothesise. And even when I was correct, it was exciting to read how the information splayed out across the pages.
I loved Audra as a character-she was great; a woman on a mission and is indeed vengeful (my favourite type of character!).

This book took place across 2 timelines and 3 different POV’s (one being of Audra, one of Max, and one of Juniper- a witness to the events in 1988). It was pageturning to go through these events and watching it all unfold, with the backdrop of a prestigious art college and world.

This book depicts trauma, lies, manipulations those that are complicit. I loved the academia setting in an arts college too. The author issues fantastic descriptions using art-based-terminology and depicts emotions such as terror in such a visceral way, it was hard not to imagine the settings and characters.

I loved the title of this novel, and was excited by the premise. It was a slow-burn kind of novel to begin with, but once the story was underway and all the characters had their feet under the table, I found myself increasingly enmeshed, and didn't want to put it down. I love novels set within academia, particularly exploring the dark undercurrents of those insular and often exclusionary worlds. That, combined with the revenge thriller slant, made for an intoxicating combination.

I loved that the story followed two timelines - the first at a rural art commune in the eighties, and the second in the present day, with respected artist and thesis advisor Max Durant visiting his brilliant student Audra to view her graduate collection. The links the author gradually revealed between past and present were deftly executed and well-paced, and the novel was beautifully written,

This is the first book I have read by this author but it won't be the last. An exceptional story of friendship, art, academia, revenge, and morality. I loved it.

Thank you to NetGalley, and to the publisher, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This one intrigued me, and in the most part it was captivating. I liked the way the book was split into sections and the themes were interesting.
I personally struggled with the thesis chapters that occur as I just couldn't visualise what was being portrayed and I think its difficult to describe art. Blame myself for the block, not the author.
Good narrative, buckets of female rage and action.