Enter the Darkness by Sarah Budd

I received this book for free from NetGalley to facilitate my review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

During the Spring Solstice, four people enter the caves underneath London.

Garth: a shy young man, who seeks to save the girl of his dreams.

Cassie: a beautiful young woman, who seeks to use the dark magic of the caves for her own purposes.

Bill: an older man with a terrible secret, who seeks to find Garth and Cassie before it’s too late.

Sienna: a con artist with a dark past, who seeks to escape her fate as a chosen sacrifice.

Four people enter. Each of them must battle their personal demons before facing the White Lady, who rises each year during the Spring Solstice with a hunger for human flesh. Only one of them will survive.

Who will it be?

Let me be clear – I love horror novels. In fact, I don’t often find horror novels that I’m not a big fan of. That being said… I wasn’t a big fan of this one.

For one thing, I felt absolutely no connection to any of the characters. I didn’t have the “Oh I hope that one doesn’t die” or “I hope that one isn’t one of the bad guys” feeling about any of them. They were there and that was that. I will give the author credit for at least giving some background for the main characters, but other than that, I just didn’t feel connected to any of them.

The writing wasn’t the best. I realize this was an “uncorrected proof” but the amount of mistakes – extra words, missing words, missing or incorrect punctuation, sentences that should have been one sentence instead of two or three – makes me think that an editor didn’t even see the book before it was put on NetGalley. That being said, I was able to make sense of the book.

The pacing was just horrible – I felt like I was just slogging through the book the entire time I was reading it. It was such a struggle for me to keep going, but I didn’t want to DNF the book for some reason. I kept hoping it would get better, but it just didn’t.

There were no appreciable plot twists and the few there were I had been easily able to predict. The ending wasn’t spectacular either. I can’t say that I’d read anything else by this author. Two stars because the story was somewhat readable, but I definitely wouldn’t go out of my way to read anything by her again.

About Sarah Budd

Sarah Budd is a horror writer from London. She has always been fascinated by anything out of the ordinary. Her work has appeared in over twenty magazines and anthologies including Slash-Her, NoSleep Podcast, Diabolica Britannica, Tales to Terrify, Aphotic Realm, Sanitarium Magazine, Dark Fire Fiction, Mystic Blue Review, Siren’s Call Publications, Deadman’s Tome, Innersins, Aphelion, Bewildering Stories and Blood Moon Rising Magazine.

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