Breakaway Books

Authored by Marisha Pessl; Published November 2024; Thriller

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

If you love escape rooms, and especially those designed with a creepy backdrop, the novel Darkly is for you. The whole book felt like an immersive puzzle.

Darkly follows Dia Gannon, an outcast at her high school, as she applies for a highly coveted internship with an extremely famous board game company. When she miraculously attains the internship, she is plunged into a mysterious quest to find a boy who disappeared playing a game that was supposedly the last created by the company’s founder. She and the other interns are quickly ensnared in the game as a way of picking up the boy’s trail, but the game and the mystery are far more dangerous than they seem. Dia is determined to know what happened to the boy and the founder, but she is quickly drawn into the biggest puzzle of all: Why was she chosen for this game?

There is something very attractive about the premise of this novel, as long as a thriller that is right on the edge of horror is your style. The narrative induced the reader to wonder, constantly, “Am I playing the game right now? Or is this real?” This is a compelling tool for keeping us on our toes. The game featured in this novel, Valkyrie, definitely has a nightmarish quality, but Dia quickly starts to figure out the behind-the-scenes mechanics, and I found that process fascinating. Taking apart the game is easily the most fun part of the novel—almost enough to make me forget about the boy whose disappearance is supposed to be at the heart of the adventure. The plot progresses through numerous twists and turns and although I guessed some of them, there were still quite a few surprises remaining at the end. 

The characters themselves, unfortunately, are not quite as compelling. Dia’s mother Gigi is one-dimensional to the extreme, seemingly defined solely by her need to find a romantic partner and unbelievably neglectful of Dia. Choke, Dia’s love interest, comes off as privileged and overly protective of Dia, to the point of undermining her. I wish the other interns had a little more depth to them, because at moments, they seem to be the most interesting and empathetic in the novel’s cast of characters. As for Dia herself, I found her difficult to understand and connect with. Is she smart? She comes off as ordinary at the beginning, even by her own declaration, but clearly has a clever way of seeing the board games. Is she brave? At times, she seems so, and others, not so much. I couldn’t get a read for how the author meant for her to be portrayed as special, although it’s clear that she is meant to be. At the end of the novel, I found myself utterly befuddled by Dia’s choices, even if her departure from home makes for a memorable conclusion to the narrative. 

Darkly is a great novel for puzzle enthusiasts, as long as you don’t scare easily. But, be warned, the game far outshines the characters playing it.