BookBrowse Reviews The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee

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The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee

The Dark We Know

by Wen-yi Lee
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  • Aug 13, 2024, 336 pages
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Though it tells rather than shows a little too often, The Dark We Know is a solid, finely observed young adult horror yarn.

Written by Wen-yi Lee, The Dark We Know comes to us from Gillian Flynn Books, so it seems appropriate that there's more than a hint of Flynn's own Camille Preaker in Lee's troubled protagonist, Isadora Chang — and, for that matter, more than a hint of Sharp Objects' ruminations on trauma and repression in small-town America in this narrative. Isadora returns from art school to Slater, the mining town where she grew up, to attend the funeral of her abusive father, and it's immediately clear that she doesn't relish this homecoming: as soon as she steps out of the car, she refers to "Slater winter smothering me like a friend," a nice bit of description that says a lot about how she feels about Slater and even more about how she feels about friends.

In fact, two of her childhood friends are no longer living, and after her alienated upbringing in this dead-end place, Isa is in no ...

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  Slate Mining in America

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