Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
I would like to thank Penguin Books, Bantam Books and Random Things Tours for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Bantam Books
Published – Out Now
Price – £20 hardback £10.99 ebook
In Lock Haven, a quiet little town in Washington State, there is a very special street.
Bird Street. The residents of Bird Street are all successful, wealthy, healthy and happy. And their children are all well-mannered and smart and high achievers.
At least they are for eleven months of the year.
In November, however, the ‘Darker Days’ begin. For November’s the month when things take a turn for the worse: accidents, bad luck, familial conflict and illness take hold. And it is in November that a stranger comes to Bird Street to collect the debt owed by the residents.
Because, you see, there is a price that must be paid for all the happiness and good fortune they enjoy for the other eleven months of year. And that price is one human life. Every November. Without fail.
And so it has been for over a hundred years. To ease their guilt, the residents of Bird Street seek out individuals – usually the elderly or the terminally ill – who wish to die with dignity and are content to be helped on their way.
But this year, things don’t go to plan. This year events take a terrifying turn . . .
Trigger warning – this review will talk abut suicide, metal health and euthanasia. The book handles these well but it may not be for all readers.
As the nights darken that lack of daylight can be sometimes quite soul-destroying. There are days when I don’t see much daylight and I definitely feel a lack of energy. It is not unusual in winter months to look inwards and perhaps start berating ourselves. We may feel that while we know we are deep down good people sometimes we are not. That leads to another troubling question how much are we prepared to sacrifice of ourselves to keep the life we want even if it hurts other people but helps us? These two themes get explored in Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s deliciously dark horror novel Darker Days where a set of unusually lucky families are hiding the darkest of secrets
In the small town of Lock Haven in the US state of Washington is a small road where the families living there have had charmed lives. Wealthy, healthy and all have great prospects for each generation. For eleven months things are perfect and then comes the 1st of November and the darker days begin. The luck fades, people’s worse aspects come back into their personalities and very much the things you love hurt you the most. For the De Silva family we have successful judge Ralph who starts drinking, his wife an equally successful academic Luana has old injuries coming back causing immense pain and then we have their two children Django a youtube sensation as a child music prodigy and Olympic athlete in the making Kaila, they also find their mental health get worse and Kaila is feeling increasingly suicidal. All their neighbours are in a similar desperate place.
The solution is always simple – someone must be chosen to be taken to the woods behind the houses and die. Normally these days that means the aged or the terminally ill, but they must die in those woods. The ‘Samaritans of Bird Street’ often love to help those they spot as suitable targets but this year their plans are getting frustrated, and the cycle is getting ever worse. This time their luck may not be infinite.
While yes there is definitely a supernatural element to the story, I find the most unsettling part of this novel is how human beings are seen to make moral compromises when their livelihoods are on the line. The de Silva family we see are actually nice, caring and you’ll probably like them. Ralphie is even very conscientious about who the sacrifice will be. He acts as the group moral conscience. But they are still deciding to taker a life even with permission of someone terminally ill and desperate for release from pain. The ‘Samaritans of Bird Street’ just profit in strange ways from it and there are signs for their targets something happens after death that is not partially welcome. We see the Bird Street residents have safeguards to ensure only the right person is chosen but what if you get desperate? As their target list goes wrong and the sacrifice has not taken place things get worse for the residents. To protect your family from something terrible how far would you the. go? We get to see Kaila’s mental health worsen over a few weeks so if you could save them from death how far would you go to protect them? Others merely just want the lives they’ve built with this strange luck. As a character remarks its like climate change we all feel sad seeing a stranded polar bear but how many of us are making wholesale changes to our lives? This is a novel asking the reader to get uncomfortable about moral questions and it really works. Seeing Kaila’s depression worsen to horrific suicidal levels are the reminder to Ralphie that he has only until the end of November before things stay either very bad or get far far worse.
Around this is the moral supernatural force pulling this together. We meet an entity known as The Accountant who is shiveringly uncanny in the small number of scenes that he appears in his suit drooling and emitting smoke from his strange suit . Is he the devil or something else? That’s left to us but he’s not someone to underestimate when trying to negotiate. Around Bird Street we see that the centuries of sacrifices have actually left a ghostly stain on the land, and these darker days seems to allow them to increase their own power to disturb the residents.
What I really liked is when you think you know how this story will end Heuvelt surprises us midway. It shows the group for what they really are and leaves a disturbing impression on us but it’s the aftermath where things finally go off the rails. The horror of children playing, getting lost in those woods and more is amplified in that section of the novel. There is a cost for the de Silva’s actions in the first half that I was not expecting, and it really shatters the group for the final time. I didn’t see it coming but it underlines the feeling that the more moral compromises a person makes it eventually reaches a point where all bets are off as to what they will then permit themselves to do. Kaila becomes quite central to how the next generation will then judge her own family’s actions which gives the story its emotional impact.
There are two parts of the story that didn’t quite work for me. The wider story is supposed to be about all the residents of the street but largely they’re off the page and we focus just on the de Silvas and so we don’t really get to see or compare the other group’s moral compromises, and the few times we did felt a little thinly explored. There is one final big reveal about the de Silvas that I felt possibly overstretched the plot but its very much just the final scene, so I’ll leave that for other readers to judge if they accept it.
Darker Days I found a troubling but absorbing story. It reminds us that we all make compromises to live and asks the reader, well for a happy life what would you accept? Where is the line drawn and would you nudge it for a really ‘good’ reason? The small town feel and the relatively nice de Silvas that we meet make us look at ourselves in the mirror here and that’s as always, the most scary part of a story as to what a human is prepared to do to another with their own free will. A chilling winter tale awaits you and is highly recommended!
