The Girls in the Dark

• Author: Avery Bishop
• Genre: Mystery/Suspense
• Publication Date: April 24, 2026
• Publisher: Bookouture Audio

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I stare at the security footage, heart pounding in my chest. I know who broke into my home—she has a face just like my own. Twenty years ago, my sister was killed and I survived. So how can she be here now? And what does she want?

For years I have been haunted by memories of the almost five months my twin sister and I were abducted and held in darkness. I see her frightened eyes, staring at me for the last time as I whisper a promise to her, the one I failed to keep. “I’ll come back for you…”

The twentieth anniversary of our abduction brings a swirling sense of dread. And when I find a black rose on the passenger seat of my car, it feels like a warning. Not long after, a figure with a face so like my own breaks into my house. My sister.

I tell myself it can’t be true. Her body was never found and I’m sure she died in that room at the hands of our abductor. But what if I’m wrong and she’s back for revenge?

Because for years I’ve kept a secret about what really happened the night I escaped. And as the threats grow, I start to fear for my life. Now it’s clear someone wants the truth to come to light. But if it does, will it destroy everything?

An addictive and breathtaking thriller, packed with nail-biting tension and a shocking final twist, The Girls in the Dark is perfect for fans of Jessica Knoll, Mary Kubica and John Marrs.

Typically, I can read most suspense/thriller/mystery novels without feeling overwhelmed by many situations that can be triggering, but everyone has their limits, right? Scenes that bother me the most involve harming or killing children or animals. I went into the read knowing that one of the twins was killed, but I didn’t realize their age (15) or the fact that these girls were raped and tortured. 

I’m actually glad that I didn’t know this information before I started, because I might have shied away from the book, which would have been doing myself a disservice. In my opinion, Bishop handles the difficult subject matter with exquisite sensitivity, and avoided veering into gratuitous violence or graphic descriptions. This is also one of the rare standalone novels in the genre that focus heavily on the lingering effects of trauma and how it can haunt a person, along with addressing the experience of survivor’s guilt. I was even more surprised to learn that the androgynous name is a pseudonym for a male writer who never gave me the impression of ‘men writing women’ or trauma porn.

The audiobook is narrated by Brittany Pressley, one of my favorite narrators. She’s got such a full range of tones and pitch, and is able to convincingly portray both a terrified teenager and various adults of both genders. Her narration is one of the factors that took this from a good read to a great one.

As for the book itself, I was pleasantly surprised. I started my read feeling intrigued, but it didn’t take long for me to become very reluctant to stop reading. While it cut into my beauty sleep because I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next, I regret nothing.

Megan is the surviving twin that narrates both timelines—one from twenty years ago when she and her sister Allison were 15 years old, and her life in the present day. Both timelines had me equally invested; I was desperate to find out how Megan escaped, what happened to her sister, and what was going on in the present day. As teenagers, Megan and Allison are experiencing growing pains in their relationship as twins. They’ve lived their whole lives as a pair, and they’re now starting to grow apart and explore their own unique identities outside of being a twin. In the present day, Megan appears to be doing well and is successful. She wrote a bestseller about her experiences during the abduction, does public speaking engagements, and is married to a successful lawyer. 

But while everything seems to be going great in her life, cracks are starting to show. Early on in the book it is clear that Megan is keeping a secret from everyone about her abduction, and she reads as pretty anxious, including panic attacks she had during her confinement. This contributes to the tense, claustrophobic atmosphere in the novel. The girls are kept in enclosures that are barely big enough for them, and they seem to struggle with early signs of muscle atrophy as a result of their confinement. I had so many questions in this timeline: How did Megan escape? What happened to Allison? Did the cops catch the guy? Megan never uses his name, which they know, preferring to call him ‘the monster,’ which suits him well.

In Megan’s present day timeline, she keeps receiving little warnings, starting with a black rose left for her on the twentieth anniversary of her abduction. This is obviously linked to the secret that she’s keeping, but as these warnings hit closer to home, Megan’s anxiety and the tension in the story is ratcheted up accordingly. Megan’s behavior becomes increasingly desperate as she feels more and more trapped by her lie, and this is where I could barely put the book down to do anything. There are some twists in the story, but the ones that occur at the end completely shocked me. 

Megan is understandably reluctant to open up to others, despite the book she published with the use of a ghostwriter, and her circle of friends is quite small as an adult, mainly limited to her husband, and her best friend Zoe who also doubles as her agent. Despite this tendency towards privacy, Megan also becomes involved in the making of a documentary about her life overall. It does lead to some important reveals, and while I didn’t really love how pushy the woman interviewing her was, it was a great way to be informative by showing rather than telling. There are a lot of little clues that don’t seem like clues when they’re dropped, but ultimately, the ending completely shocked me. 

Overall, this was a fantastic and fresh new addition to a genre that I am a fan of, and this turned out to be a really interesting read. The pacing was a bit slow for the first parts of the book, specifically when the girls were held captive since there wasn’t a lot of activity while they were kidnapped. In the present timeline, there is a lot going on: they’re still searching for the serial killer who took Megan and Allison, there’s tension in Megan’s marriage, the documentary is causing memories to come up and further stress Megan, the presence of the black rose as a warning, a new book she owes her publisher but can’t seem to get written, and the overwhelming fear that her secret will get out. It made for a faster read during Megan’s adult timeline, but the ending really blew my mind.

Bottom line: A unique take on a woman’s life after surviving a serial killer and losing her twin, sensitively handling a range of trauma and survivor’s guilt with a twist you’ll never see coming.

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