-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Leslie Lutz
A teenage psychic is drawn deep into the honeycomb of an abandoned hotel—and into a cat-and-mouse game with a predatory entity—in this riveting new supernatural horror novel.
Everyone in Gypsum, Texas knows the Hotel Alvarado changes at night—especially Quinn. A teenage clairvoyant, he's been having dreams about it… dreams that call him to its dark, abandoned halls. The hotel is a monument to the town's more prosperous past, when celebrities flocked to the mineral spas and films were shot in the desert. The Great Depression killed all of that, it killed the Alvarado, and frankly it killed Gypsum, too. Now, when the sun goes down, things no longer living stir deep within its creaking depths.
But the dreams are relentless. When Quinn braves the hotel's darkness with his best friend June and unrequited love Selena, looking for answers, he gets only one: ghosts aren't the scariest thing lurking inside the Alvarado (although they're there, cold and restless and angry).
No. He's been called by something worse: a predatory, inhuman entity that threatens to wipe Gypsum off the map, along with everyone in it. And wrongly—accidentally—he's let it out. It takes the shape of a handsome young man. It walks. It talks. It laughs. It can even make you laugh. But its appetite for death can never be sated. Quinn has always had the power to see the future… can he find the power to change it?
"An imaginative supernatural thriller novel set in a small town you won't soon forget." —Kirkus Reviews
"A good fit for fans of Riverdale and Christopher Pike." —Boooklist
"The opening chapters are powerful enough to pull in reluctant readers, but later chapters require much more diligence. A secondary purchase for libraries in need of beefing up their horror/supernatural offerings." —School Library Journal
"The unexpected heart of this supernatural horror is a monster that has experienced romantic love, has suffered immeasurably, and has spent its entire life desperate to not be itself so that it will not be loathed, feared, abandoned, or trapped." —The Bulletin
"Mesmeric. Hauntingly beautiful. A must-read for anyone who dares to venture into the abyss." —Robin Alvarez, author of When Oceans Rise
"Spooky. Scary. Mysterious. Twisty." —A. Lee Martinez, award-winning author of A Namless Witch
This information about Sweetest Darkness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Leslie Lutz loves writing about haunted water. If it's got a tentacle, or a water ghost, or a near-drowning, she's probably going to write about it. She is the author of Fractured Tide, which won the Frisco First Chapter Contest, and has written short fiction and poetry published in several journals, including Orca Literary Journal, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, Typishly, The Lyric, and Raintown Review. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and when she's not writing, you can find her watching B-horror movies, scuba diving, or taking care of chickens.
If you liked Sweetest Darkness, try these:
by Rachel Lyon
Published 2025
An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island, about addiction and sex, family and independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years
by Shubnum Khan
Published 2025
"A dark and heady dream of a book" (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous
by Ondjaki
Published 2024
A blackout leads two teens to discover the intimacy and vulnerability that can only be shared in darkness in Our Beautiful Darkness, a fully illustrated YA novella from celebrated Angolan author Ondjaki and illustrator António Jorge Gonçalves.
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
