The Darkness Greeted Her by Christina Ferko

Blurb:

Yellowjackets meets Smile in this atmospheric sapphic horror debut, in which a group of troubled girls are stalked through the Appalachian wilderness by a frightening monster that feeds on their deepest fears.

Penny's abusive father is dead…but she still hears his voice in her head, encouraging her to hurt those around her. She can't go to school or be around her friends or even draw with a sharp pencil without her intrusive thoughts urging her toward violence. Desperate to get a handle on her OCD, she agrees to spend the summer at Camp Whitewood—an exclusive therapy retreat in the woods. 

She feels optimistic when she arrives. The other girls all have their reasons for being there, which makes Penny feel a little less alone. But then she starts seeing things that can't possibly be there: the gold watch her father was buried with, his favorite whiskey spilled on her cabin floor...a terrifying figure she calls the Shadow Man looming at the foot of her bed. Penny thinks she is losing her mind, but when a girl goes missing, and is later found dead, it's clear that whatever is happening at Camp Whitewood isn't all in her head.

As the hallucinations become increasingly intense and more girls wind up dead, Penny must work with whoever is left standing to figure out what is real before the Shadow Man uses their traumas against them and claims their lives.

Review:

Although Penny (Penelope)’s abusive father is dead, he’s never left her. Haunted by his voice in her head, which everyone–including professionals–keep telling her is the result of her Harm OCD, she’s constantly compelled and driven by intrusive thoughts to hurt others or herself. Desperate to wrangle control over her deteriorating mind and deep fears of succumbing to her OCD, she signs up for a months-long camp in a secluded wood that is meant to rehabilitate young girls with similar problems and help them recover from trauma.

However, not everything is as it seems in the camp, entitled Camp Whitewood. The other girls, the camp counselors, and even the woods themselves have teeth–and they might want to sink those teeth into the campers.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH??!?!?!?! (I feel like I’ve started so many recent reviews this way.) (In my defense, I’m reading a lot of wonderful books.) (Also in my defense, The Darkness Greeted Her is absolutely incredible.) I’m going to try to temper my review, because to be frank, this novel is everything I’ve ever wanted in a horror book and more. It’s so, so, so well done, and I’m so excited to be talking about it now.

The Darkness Greeted Her was recommended to me by my friend, Carly (C.C.) Foster, because her friend is the author of this novel. Let me say first and foremost: when I get a recommendation from someone like C.C., I pay attention, and those books usually climb to the top of my TBR. C.C. is a notoriously excellent writer who surrounds herself with great fiction, and so, I take that into account. I think I would’ve been in a world of blissful, terrible ignorance without her recommending this book to me.

So, where do I start? I guess I can say that I was obsessed from the opening pages. Christina Ferko is an unknown author to me, but holy heck, does she have a skill for voice. Not only voice, but character backstory, character depth, and character comprehension. Mastering characterization is a lot (lot) harder than it seems at face value. Ferko manages it with perhaps faux ease, immersing readers into the mind of her protagonist within just a few lines.

The first lines of the novel were some of my favorites: “There’s a difference between dead and dead enough. My father is dead–but he’s not dead enough.” If a set of first lines has ever pulled me into a novel with basically no context as to what will come, it was these lines.

Not many know this, but I tend to buy novels based entirely on vibes. Yes, I know, I sound insane. But it’s true. I have an odd sixth (bookish) sense for when I’ll like a novel versus when I won’t, and it has nothing to do with cover quality. I usually try not to look at a blurb in/on a book unless I’m on the fence, because I like to be surprised by the storytelling in the novel’s pages. This was one of those books I didn’t read the blurb of, and oh my word, am I glad.

The Darkness Greeted Her is absolutely twisty and complex and almost hallucinatory in nature. It tosses out the trope of fearing the unknown to fearing the known, which is a focus I love to see the rise of in recent horror fiction. 

I especially enjoyed the setting of this novel, a cabin camp in the woods, as I’ve been to several of those by way of my living in Oregon, United States. It was a familiar setting, and therefore all the more haunting due to its familiarity. I also really, really loved the Harm OCD rep in this novel as someone who experiences Harm OCD myself. It was authentic and jarring and absolutely extraordinary, and I can’t wait to read what Ferko writes next! She’s a master of characterization and horror.