title: Dark Cornersauthor: Megan Goldin
series: Rachel Krall #2
published: 8 August 2023
publisher: St. Martin's Press
genre(s): thrillers
pages: 311
source: Book of the Month
format: hardcover
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | BookHype | StoryGraph | Goodreads
rating:
| series rating: 
the blurb
Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his freedom approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following. Hours later, Maddison disappears, and police suspect she’s been kidnapped—or worse. Is Maddison’s disappearance connected to her visit to Bailey? Why was she visiting him in the first place?
When they hit a wall in the investigation, the FBI reluctantly asks for Rachel’s help in finding the missing influencer. Maddison seems only to exist on social media; she has no family, no friends, and other than in her posts, most people have never seen her. Who is she, really? Using a fake Instagram account, Rachel Krall goes undercover to BuzzCon, a popular influencer conference, where she discovers a world of fierce rivalry that may have turned lethal.
When police find the body of a woman with a tattoo of a snake eating its tail, the FBI must consider a chilling possibility: Bailey has an accomplice on the outside and a dangerous obsession with influencers, including Rachel Krell herself. Suddenly a target of a monster hiding in plain sight, Rachel is forced to confront the very real dangers that lurk in the dark corners of the internet.
Rachel Krall, the true crime podcaster star of Megan Goldin’s acclaimed Night Swim returns to search for a popular social media influencer who disappeared after visiting a suspected serial killer.
- my review
- a few notes
Dark Corners follows The Night Swim in the Rachel Krall series. I love the premise of this series, that the main narrator is a podcast host who becomes deeply embroiled in the cases she investigates. In this one, Rachel is thrust into the middle of the influencer world after a famous influencer disappears, one who has a connection to a soon-to-be released convict who is also suspected of being a serial killer.
This book had a bit of a different feel to it. As a character, Rachel often seemed to lack the warmth she had in the first book without any real reason why, other than perhaps an alluded to level of stress connected to hosting a wildly successful podcast. More than that, the style was different, with only Rachel’s POV, as opposed to the dual perspectives in The Night Swim. Instead of the second perspective, there were inserts of the podcast as it was told after the fact. It wasn’t a bad style change, but different.
All in all, this was a great read, with lots of twists and turns. I’m not big into the influencer world, but it was an interesting behind-the-scenes-esque look at it.
content warning: ❗some graphic violence❗
POV:
keywords/phrases: influencers, murder
cover notes: meh
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