Title: SUCH DARK THINGS
Author: Courtney Evan Tate (Courtney Cole)
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Publisher: Mira (Harper Collins)
Release Date: March 20, 2018
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2BuQy29
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2D107mv
Apple: https://apple.co/2Fg8I6M
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2oR1D5z
Mark to Read on Goodreads:
Synopsis:
I thought I knew him. He thought he knew me. We were both wrong…
Dr. Corinne Cabot is living the American dream. She’s a successful ER physician in Chicago who’s married to a handsome husband. Together they live in a charming house in the suburbs. But appearances can be deceiving—and what no one can see is Corinne’s dark past. Troubling gaps in her memory mean she recalls little about a haunting event in her life years ago that changed everything.
She remembers only being in the house the night two people were found murdered. Her father was there, too. Now her father is in prison; she hasn’t been in contact in years. Repressing that terrifying memory has caused Corinne moments of paranoia and panic. Sometimes she thinks she sees things that aren’t there, hears words that haven’t been spoken. Or have they? She fears she may be losing her mind, unable to determine what’s real and what’s not.
So when she senses her husband’s growing distance, she thinks she’s imagining things. She writes her suspicions off to fatigue, overwork, anything to explain what she can’t accept—that her life really isn’t what it seems.
Dr. Corinne Cabot is living the American dream. She’s a successful ER physician in Chicago who’s married to a handsome husband. Together they live in a charming house in the suburbs. But appearances can be deceiving—and what no one can see is Corinne’s dark past. Troubling gaps in her memory mean she recalls little about a haunting event in her life years ago that changed everything.
She remembers only being in the house the night two people were found murdered. Her father was there, too. Now her father is in prison; she hasn’t been in contact in years. Repressing that terrifying memory has caused Corinne moments of paranoia and panic. Sometimes she thinks she sees things that aren’t there, hears words that haven’t been spoken. Or have they? She fears she may be losing her mind, unable to determine what’s real and what’s not.
So when she senses her husband’s growing distance, she thinks she’s imagining things. She writes her suspicions off to fatigue, overwork, anything to explain what she can’t accept—that her life really isn’t what it seems.
Excerpt:
My skin is sticky with blood.
My waistband is wet with it, and I can taste it on
my lips. It’s splattered on my face, and it tastes like metal that has been
rotting in the sun and rain for a hundred years. The night makes me shiver, the
cool breeze rustling my hair, and for a split second, I’m back there in that
house, standing in that blood. My bare toes feel the warmth of the liquid turn
cool as the minutes tick past.
Goose bumps raise on my neck, and a knot that I
can’t swallow is lodged in my throat. My feet are frozen frozen frozen on the
ground, and I can’t move.
Their eyes are open and lifeless, although they
stare at me.
They see me.
Yet they see nothing.
I can’t breathe.
My lips are ice, just like theirs.
My heart is pounding and racing and stuttering,
and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
“Corinne. You’re safe here. Corinne.”
And just like that, I’m not there.
I’m here.
“There was blood all over me.” My words are
stilted and fragile, like glass.
I stare at my hand, and even though it’s clean
now, I see it as it was seventeen years ago, covered in the blood of two souls…souls
that were living and that aren’t anymore. It’s hard to wrap my mind around. First
they were breathing, and then they weren’t. It happened in a split second. I
inhale shakily.
“Think about that moment,” the doctor instructs. “Who
can you see?”
I think on that. “Melanie is next to me on the
floor. Her head is bleeding into a pool. There is so much blood that it looks
black.” I close my eyes, because it had been the first time I’d seen blood like
that, and it terrified me.
“Joe is on the bed. His blood is splattered all over
the wall. Both of them have their eyes open.”
Staring at me.
The emotions welling up in me are like a wave,
swelling, swelling, swelling…until I can’t handle it anymore. The horror and
the guilt and the pain are just too much.
“I can’t do this,” I blurt out. “I’m done for the
day.”
Dr. Phillips looks at me, and he’s calm and
detached.
“Corinne, why are you here?”
I pause. What a stupid question. “You know why I’m
here.”
I hate it when they treat me with such
condescension.
“Humor me,” he tells me. “Why are you here?”
I grit my teeth and look away.
He waits.
“You’re saying that I tried to hurt myself. But I
wouldn’t do that.”
I look at him now, and he’s so fucking
emotionless. I look down at my left wrist, at the bandage covering up the stitches.
“I wouldn’t,” I insist again. “I’m a fucking
physician. I wouldn’t have cut my wrist horizontally. If I really wanted to
hurt myself, I would’ve known to cut vertically along the vein.”
I finger the gauze. Beneath it, the cut throbs,
evidence of something I don’t remember doing.
“I’m not crazy,” I add. And I don’t know if I’m
trying to convince Dr. Phillips, or myself.
“You’re not crazy.” He nods. “But you’ve
experienced a mental break. You’re here because you need to deal with the
causal underlying issue so that it won’t happen again. Right?”
He’s a fucking asshole.
I stare at the wall. At the whiteness, at the
sterility.
“You need some plants in here,” I tell him,
avoiding the question. “Greenery puts patients at ease. All this blankness…it’s
maddening.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says wryly. “Corinne…”
I interrupt. “Dr. Cabot,”
I tell him. “I’ve earned it.”
“Dr. Cabot,” he corrects himself. “You’re right. You’ve
earned it. You worked a long time to finish medical school and your residency. You’re
a top ER physician. You have a life envied by everyone around you. You’ve got
to take care of yourself, so you can protect this life you’ve built.”
I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, it’s dark and
safe. It’s black and warm.
“Protect it from what?” I whisper.
“You tell me,” he answers. “You’ve got something
inside of you that is triggered now, something that creates panic and a
fight-or-flight response. We know what your father did so long ago. What we don’t
know is why…or
what damage it has caused in you, damage that seems to be affecting you now.”
“I don’t know either,” I say helplessly, my eyes
opening to the white walls again. “I can’t remember. I never could. You know
that.”
“I know.” Dr. Phillips nods again, and he tries to
be so fucking comforting. “You have a history of dis-associative behavior. You
blocked out what your father did so long ago, and it stands to reason that your
brain has developed that as a defense mechanism. It’s doing it again now. If we
don’t get to the bottom of why your memories are being triggered now, after all
of these years…you’ll never have peace. Do we agree on that?”
Reluctantly, I nod.
“So we have to start at the beginning. You have to
stay here and focus.”
Anger flares in me, red and hot, and I stare him
down. He doesn’t blink and neither do I.
“Focus?” I ask him, and my words are sharp and I
wish they would cut him. “You think it’s as simple as sitting down and focusing?
How dare you sit there and tell me what to do, when you have no idea
what it’s like?”
I stand up to leave, but the psychiatrist’s next
sentence holds me in my place, freezing me.
“Corinne, you promised Jude you’d try.”
Jude.
My beautiful, understanding Jude.
I swallow hard. I did promise.
And I have to follow through, even though the pain it causes me is
immeasurable. I owe it to him. I’ll do it for him. Not for
this psychiatrist, but for Jude.
My body folds back into the seat, and I finger the
medical bracelet circling my right wrist. Corinne Elizabeth Cabot, Female. It’s
me, condensed into one stark sentence, yet I’m a stranger to myself right now. That’s
why I’m here. I don’t know myself or my thoughts. My memories are foreign,
blocked, nightmarish, out of control.
“Fine.” There’s nothing else I can say.
Dr. Phillips is quietly triumphant. “Let’s begin
again. Take a deep breath and close your eyes.”
I do, drawing the cool air in a rush over my
teeth, expanding my lungs and holding it, before I let it slowly exhale. I do
it again, then again.
“Think back to that night, Dr. Cabot. Stand in
that room. Tell me where your father is.”
I envision it, I see it in my mind like it was
yesterday. My father in his bloody steel-toed boots. “He’s on the porch,
waiting for the police to come.”
“He left you alone in the house with two dead
bodies?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t try to run?”
“No.”
“Okay. What did you do then?” my doctor asks me
calmly, unfazed by the ugliness of my story.
“I was stunned. I think I was in shock. My hand
was bleeding.”
Dr. Phillips looks at my hand, because I’m
stroking the scar now, an unconscious nervous tic that I often do when I’m
anxious. “What happened to your hand?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Is there a lot that you don’t remember from that
night?”
“Yes. You know that.”
“Yes, I do,” he acknowledges. “So you’re standing
in the middle of a bloody crime scene because your father left you alone. What
did you do then, Corinne?”
“I looked out the window,” I tell him. “I was
frozen. I couldn’t move. My feet felt like concrete and I was afraid if I
moved, my heart would explode. So I took deep breaths. I watched the trick-or-treaters
walking by. I looked at the blood on my shoe. I looked at the jack-o’-lanterns
that were lit on porches, and the ghosts hanging in the trees. There was a full
moon. There was light on my shoulders.”
“Anything else?”
“I stared at the street sign on the corner. All
Hallows Lane.”
“That’s ironic,” the doctor points out needlessly.
“Yes.”
“How long did you stand there?” His question is
quiet.
“Until they came and took me away.”
Review:
I don't know where to start with "Such Dark Things". This book was so thrilling and had enough suspense to keep me reading the book!!
Jude and Corinne were sweethearts and had a special kind of love. There were things that made them the perfect couple but there were also things that made them an everyday couple.
Corinne was a doctor who lived for her job. She enjoyed taking care of people and loved the people she worked with but her work life was taking over her personal life. She has demons that were pushed away so she would never have to deal. Corinne was lost in herself and because of that she never gave Jude the time he deserved. Jude was also a doctor and he LOVED his wife but the demons she had was weighing down on him and things changed.
This book gave me a lot to think about...the who, the what, the how, the why!! There were things that I could not imagine happening and the reason behind it. I am very happy to have had the chance to read this book and get to know there characters. The end and out of this relationship...the why she struggled to keep things buried and once everything came out how she handled things.
I recommend this book for everyone to read!!
Jude and Corinne were sweethearts and had a special kind of love. There were things that made them the perfect couple but there were also things that made them an everyday couple.
Corinne was a doctor who lived for her job. She enjoyed taking care of people and loved the people she worked with but her work life was taking over her personal life. She has demons that were pushed away so she would never have to deal. Corinne was lost in herself and because of that she never gave Jude the time he deserved. Jude was also a doctor and he LOVED his wife but the demons she had was weighing down on him and things changed.
This book gave me a lot to think about...the who, the what, the how, the why!! There were things that I could not imagine happening and the reason behind it. I am very happy to have had the chance to read this book and get to know there characters. The end and out of this relationship...the why she struggled to keep things buried and once everything came out how she handled things.
I recommend this book for everyone to read!!
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