I have mixed feelings about this story. I was excited to read a reality TV show based book as I read one recently and it was really, really good. But this book made me think so much of Love Island, a TV show I dislike that I started to read it with some kind of misconceptions. Good for the murder and the police investigations because these parts saved the plot, even though it was part of plot. Otherwise, the contestants discussions and actions seemed a bit flat and boring. On one side I enjoyed reading it and on another side I was bored so I have mixed feelings about it.

LOVE LOVE. omg that ending???? Bea Fitzgerald I love you so MUCH i knew there was a reason i was desperate to get my hands on this book

I loved the concept of the reality show which becomes a fight for their lives / dignity. A very exciting and thrilling read overall.

I loved Bea Fitzgerald's YA so was delighted to get an ARC of her adult debut.
This was a really exciting premise- reality show set on an exotic island, and every character completely unlikeable and with their own reasons for appearing on the show, when one of them dies live on air. Whilst the characters being so awful was intentional, it did make it hard for me to care about what happened to any of them.
I enjoyed the jumping back in time to the lead up to the main event, and the police interview sections, as the story slowly pieced together.
Overall an enjoyable read, with interesting themes around the need for fame in modern society, and the ethics of it.

There have been an absolute flood of reality TV thrillers recently: LD Smithson's The Escape Room, Karen Hamilton's The Contest, Ruth Kelly's The Villa. I love this premise but having read so many, I've realised that it's actually a really hard one to write. Translating reality TV onto the page is a lot more difficult than it initially seems. For a start, you inevitably have to handle a reasonably large cast of characters and make them memorable from the off. Then you have to try and capture some of the atmosphere of watching a show like Squid Game or The Traitors and its dramatic twists, alongside thinking about the feasibility of this happening on camera and how the show is being shaped by the producers. I can't say I've yet read a thriller that's managed to pull this off (although I have very high hopes for Ruth Ware's forthcoming One Perfect Couple, as I think Ware has the writing chops to actually give it a go).

Bea Fitzgerald's Then Things Went Dark is no exception. It features six famous contestants on a desert island taking part in a show called Iconic, where they are trying to prove that they are exceptional in their different fields: there's a musician, an influencer/sculptor, an environmental activist, a tech guru, an actor and a chef. We know from the off that one of them ends up dead, and the police are trying to work out whether it was an accident or murder. Fitzgerald's writing and characterisation shows promise, but this fell flat for me. As ever with these reality TV thrillers, I struggled to believe in the appeal of the show and that people would actually tune in, although it made sense that they would want to watch the couple of better-known contestants. It also ended up being a bit more Love Island than Survivor, which is intrinsically less interesting to me, and there was little tension because we know who's going to die and we're just trying to figure out who did it (again, a game I don't really enjoy). I did like how one contestant manipulated the show for their own ends, but I think there should have been more of that. The subplot with the detectives also added little. I think I'm going to stay clear of these competition thrillers from now on unless they're by a writer, like Ware, whom I really trust.

I accepted an invitation to review this, which said I had liked Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall, so I expected something on the same lines. Unfortunately, I liked nothing about this book. The concept of the reality game show was not clear, and I had no idea of the purpose of it. The six characters were supposed to be successful in their own fields, "Iconic", but were all egotistical and thoroughly nasty, and set out to do down their fellow competitors from the start. The social media posts were annoying and also nasty. If this is meant to show where reality TV is taking us, then let the world beware, but I don't think the author had such a high-minded intention, as she gives a list of content guidance at the beginning as a warning to readers. In alphabetical order we have: abuse within a relationship, death, murder and suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, stalking, blood, injury and descriptions of a corpse. mental illnesses and mental ableism, accusations of child abuse and pedophilia!! There's not much left for her to base another novel on.