Book Review: All The Dark Places by Terri Parlato

My Rating: 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The morning after Molly Bradley celebrates her husband Jay's  fortieth birthday with a group of close friends, she finds her husband murdered in his home office. With experienced detective Rita Myers leading the investigation, the police delve deep into Jay’s life and those of his close associates – everyone is a suspect and everyone's lives are under the microscope. A psychologist by profession, Dr. Jay  Bradley was considered a nice guy and the perfect husband. He didn’t appear to have any trouble professionally and was working on a book. But he was murdered and the police suspect it was someone from his close circle.  Who killed Jay? Was he truly the nice guy everyone thought him to be? Could the killer be a disgruntled patient or was Jay murdered by someone he knew and trusted?

As the narrative progresses, our attention is drawn to traumatic events from Molly’s childhood of which few people except her husband and immediate family were aware. When she starts receiving threatening phone calls from someone who seems to know quite a bit about her she begins to fear for her own safety. Is there any connection between Molly’s past and what happened to Jay? 

The narrative is shared from alternating PoVs of Molly and the lead detective Detective Rita Myers. which gives us a well-rounded look at the crime(s) and the investigation. I liked that the lead detective in the case is a woman of 60+ with over thirty years of experience who enjoys mentoring younger recruits. The pacing of the novel ranges between slow and medium. The first half of the novel is quite slow and the writing is on the descriptive side. The story picks up after the halfway mark but even then the investigative angle was too slow for my liking and it looked like the detectives (and the FBI who entered the fray later) were not quite on top of things. Overall, the energy level was on the tepid side. There are many characters and multiple threads to keep track of which required the writing to be crisp and the plot to flow smoothly which was not the case despite the short chapters. Though I was underwhelmed with the writing and the pace of the novel,  I did like how the story came together in the end and was surprised with some parts of the final reveal. Overall, while I didn't dislike Terri Parlato’s "All the Dark Places", I wasn’t quite blown away by it. But many have enjoyed this book more than I have, so I would request you to read other reviews before deciding on this one.

Thank you Kensington Books and NetGalley,  for providing  the digital review copy of “All the Dark Places” in exchange for an honest review.