Under a Dark Sky

Author: Lori Radee-Day

Publisher: HarperCollins

Year/ 2018

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Eden Wallace is grieving the complicated death of her husband Bix when she checks in to the guesthouse of a dark sky park in upper Michigan. Her husband had made the reservation for the trip months before his death and Eden decided to keep the reservation in hopes of easing her grief and to try to get over her fear of the dark.  Eden developed the phobia when Bix died. Now she’s going to a super dark place. 

When Eden gets to the guesthouse, she discovers she’s not alone. The guesthouse is communal and houses other guests.  Eden won’t have the quiet dark place to herself as she assumed she would. 

The other guests turn out to be a group of college friends celebrating an anniversary of their own. The group of friends also have their own secrets and one of them is murdered the first night of their reunion. 

Everyone is a suspect including Eden. As the sheriff investigates, Eden does her own snooping to clear her name. As more tragedy strikes members of the college friends, their secrets are exposed. Eden also must come to terms with the secrets surrounding her husband’s death as she fights to find the killer. 

The group of friends aren’t very likable characters. There seemed to be a lot of jealousy in the group. Hard to imagine them as a close knit group back in the day. 

The highlight of book for me was one character- Officer Cooley. Cooley spent the most time with all the murder suspects. She could be sarcastic and judgmental one minute, but then understanding the next. She liked dogs more than people. I wanted to hear her backstory of how she chose a career in law enforcement and her exploits on the job. 

The book was just okay for me. It’s a good read for fans of a locked room mystery.