2 reviews for Darkridge Hollow – Nicky Shearsby

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Andrew Goddard

17 March 2024

I’ve become a real fan of her writing. This book is fast moving from the start. It was especially poignant because I’m also a step dad. The book brings back memories of other work, Stephen King’s Misery and the film Deliverance starring Burt Reynolds. It also had Hotel California playing in my head. However, it works best with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska playing in the background. It grabbed me from the start, I would have loved to have finished in one session, but life got in the way, and it had to split my reading into a number of shorter sessions. What I like most about Nicky’s writing is that I come away with a deeper understanding of what makes people tick, and especially people I must avoid at all costs. It is a great examination of the nature versus nurture paradigm, and I think I know where Nicky stands on this now. The story also treads on our reliance on the police when we are at our lowest, and the angst when they let us down. This is a book and an author I strongly recommend. I will be back for my next fix in September.

1. 

   Andrew Goddard

   Reviewer

   17 March 2024

   I’ve become a real fan of her writing.
   This book is fast moving from the start. It was especially poignant because I’m also a step dad.
   The book brings back memories of other work, Stephen King’s Misery and the film Deliverance starring Burt Reynolds. It also had Hotel California playing in my head. However, it works best with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska playing in the background.
   It grabbed me from the start, I would have loved to have finished in one session, but life got in the way, and it had to split my reading into a number of shorter sessions.
   What I like most about Nicky’s writing is that I come away with a deeper understanding of what makes people tick, and especially people I must avoid at all costs.
   It is a great examination of the nature versus nurture paradigm, and I think I know where Nicky stands on this now. The story also treads on our reliance on the police when we are at our lowest, and the angst when they let us down.
   This is a book and an author I strongly recommend.
   I will be back for my next fix in September.

   
2. 

   Victoria Redfern

   Verified customer

   15 March 2024

   Review – VL. Verdeaux
   Darkridge Hollow – Nicky Shearsby

   You think some families are crazy? Wait until you read about the fictional Ellis family from Darkridge Hollow, Ohio, USA!
   Darkridge Hollow, a place where many citizens are morally destitute, demented and depraved.
   The opening sentence of the novel sets the scene: ‘“I didn’t know it, but today was set to trigger a catastrophe…”. The reader is immediately invited to continue onwards until the climax and the conclusion. A conclusion that is so bad, it is fantastic. I was left gasping. I did not sleep well, I was disturbed.
   Nicky Shearsby provides an expertly written, economy-of-word (no word is wasted) thrilling novel. Darkridge Hollow is a concise thriller for readers who are looking for something different. Different it is! The reader is held in suspense right from the beginning to end.
   Backstory: Joshua’s, wife Anna was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. Anna, was born in Darkridge Hollow and had a daughter named Georgina. Their small family, Josh, Anna and Georgina had planned a vacation, a journey from London, England to Ohio and Darkridge Hollow to visit her origins, her background. Now, it was only Joshua and Georgina making the trip.
   The car journey began as a simple family holiday in rural Ohio. Although Georgina was a typical 12 year old moody, blooming teenager who whined whilst focusing on her cell phone, it began as a pleasant father and daughter journey.
   Driving into Darkridge Hollow, blackness, dreariness, oppression and doom weighed Josh down on this misty, dank, dark evening. Having suddenly crashed the car, he was knocked unconscious. When he awoke Georgina was missing. Things became worse, increasingly worse as Josh frantically tried to find his daughter. Josh endures four days of little sleep accompanied by violence, physical abuse and serious injury whilst trying to find his daughter. The police would not assist and he was instructed to leave town. Josh, determined to find his daughter, remained.
   Darkridge Hollow, a place where tourists and strangers are unwelcome and some disappear never to be found again.
   How could Georgina disappear so easily? Is she safe? Will he find her and if so, what of her condition?
   Days, nights passed, his anguish grew, injuries were inflicted upon him as cruel harbingers of death wanted him gone. Yet, he refused to leave town, refused to surrender himself and his daughter to evil regardless how bad his psychosis became. Joshua never gave up on finding his Georgina.
   Ensuring the reader is taken on the ride, Nicky Shearsby relates the journey with Joshua as he endures increasingly psychotic behaviour as things progress from being unsatisfactory to being an extremely bad situation becoming increasingly worse with each passing day. Lacking sustenance, sleep, injury whilst trying to stifle anguish, how much can he physically and mentally endure?

   I appreciated how two particular scenes involving blood and gore were handled. Nicky Shearsby did not fall into the trap of lesser authors who feel they have to describe violence with many excessive paragraphs describing gross degradation and depravity.
   Nicky Shearsby writes from her professional experience in psychology and her life as a counselor. She is well informed, experienced and knowledgeable of the mentally unstable and those who are criminally insane.
   You think some families are crazy? Believe me, very few families are as ghastly as the Ellis family of Darkridge Hollow. A very entertaining read, an ‘edge of the seat’ thriller.

   VL. Verdeaux
   March 2024.

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