Dark Rooms: A Novel

Written by Lili Anolik

Narrated by Eileen Stevens

The Secret History meets Sharp Objects in this stunning debut about murder and glamour set in the ambiguous and claustrophobic world of an exclusive New England prep school.

Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly—a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession—but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed.

Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying and punishing the real killer.

Compulsively readable, Lili Anolik’s debut novel combines the verbal dexterity of Marisha Pessl’s Special Topic in Calamity Physics and the haunting atmospherics and hairpin plot twists of Megan Abbott’s Dare Me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Mar 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9780062373663

Lili Anolik

Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her work has also appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, Elle, and The Believer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two young sons.

Reviews for Dark Rooms

[Nana Liyana · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Im gonna buy this book i swear!!!

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'd so looked forward to reading this book, but the problems only mounted and snowballed one upon another as I kept going with it. The first problem was a lack of suspense--what turned out to be the mystery didn't seem to be a mystery at all in the beginning, so that I spent 70 or so pages wondering what genre I was reading, and where/when the suspense would even come into play. The fact that the narrator wasn't particularly likeable or engaging didn't help. Soon after the mystery became understood, though, other problems became more prominent. The narrator and those around her would reach conclusions that didn't make sense based on the book itself and the known facts--they made sense based on what the author was clearly building toward, but not based on the facts. I don't really mind characters jumping to conclusions (people do jump to conclusions, after all), and I don't mind characters being of only average intelligence (not all people are so smart as the average mystery protagonist, after all), and I don't even mind an occasional coincidence if it doesn't seem to come out of left field. BUT, when you have characters (that's right, plural, characters) jumping to the correct conclusion over and over again, without any apparent reason to do so except for the fact that the author hasn't bothered to include enough steps to allow them to reach logical conclusions and uncover mysteries, beyond just knowing them, AND all of the primary characters are a bit dumb and a bit boring, AND there are a fair number of coincidences... well, let's just say that I'm less than interested.The funny thing is, I kept reading because I wanted to know the answer to the mystery, but it turned out that the author had a lot more fun flinging up red herrings that meant absolutely nothing, and pulling together soap-opera-type drama to the extent that it became more laughable than believable, than plotting what might have been a really enjoyable novel. So, no, I don't recommend this book, and I won't be reading anything else by Anolik. This could have been a good book, based on the bare bones plot. Instead, it was needlessly complicated and still, somehow, not all that interesting.

[bingereader87 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dark Rooms is a mystery about Grace Baker, a college student who returns home months after her high school graduation and her sister Nica's murder. After a long investigation, her murderer is found to be a longer who loved her and killed her, then himself. Grace no longer believes that and, with the help of local bad boy Damon Cruz, she starts her own investigation.

This one gets 3/5 stars from me. I might have made it 4 if not for the utter stupidity of the police. Can't say much more without spoiling it but you'll know when you read it. Other than that it was a phenomenal story. Had some uncomfortable moments but I believe they were meant to be uncomfortable as that's how Grace is most of the time. A fun read. Give it a shot.

[brittanylyn · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not even close to the caliber of Gillian Flynn, which was what I anticipated when I picked this up. I felt this was predictable and not very enthralling.

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Couldn't get through it.

[invisiblelizard · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Emo Veronica Mars. Or rather, take basically the same story line of Veronica Mars (seasons 1-2) but with none of the wit and charisma, add in generous helping of teenage melodrama, and relocate it to the east coast. I could easily elaborate, but I'll just sum up: not a very good book.

[grammarchick · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I haven't read The Secret History but I"ll tell you now, this book was nowhere near as good as Sharp Objects. I'm not even sure how they picked that book for a comparison. The protagonist was whiny and either indecisive and refusing to address the problem right in front of her or flying headlong on whatever assumption she came up with. Very unsatisfying read with predictable twists.

[susan.macura · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel revolves around the murder of 16-year-old Nica. After the crime is initially solved and blamed on a fellow student who coincidentally committed suicide, Nica’s sister Grace comes to believe that things were not as they seemed. This book follows her quest to solve her sister’s murder. Filled with twists and unexpected turns, I never stopped wondering how it all played out until the end when it all became clear. Interesting book.

[jolerie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All families are creepy in some way. Diane Arbus Page 214The discovery of her sister's murdered body in the cemetery that separates their home from the school that they've been attending, sets Grace off on an investigation that pretty much includes everyone in their social circle, the faculty of the school, and shockingly, her own family. The truth will take her to some dark places both in her family, in her community, and ultimately in herself. This murder mystery suffers from being one revelation, one twist, one shock you for shock's sake to be taken seriously. In the end, the truth of Nica's death comes across rather anticlimactic and the effect is more numbing, less surprising. Given all that, Dark Rooms is still a solid debut novel that could have been tighter, but the premise was engaging enough to keep me turning the pages.

[bonniemarjorie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

‘I hauled my body along, through the trees, over the fence, toward what I knew–knew because it was there, all of it, in that piercing mechanical wail, knew because it was prophesied in my dream, as elusive as a scent, a shadow, a ghost, knew because it was written in the very blood flowing through my veins—would be as bad as it gets.’Grace and Nica both attend Chandler Academy, a private boarding school in Hartford, Connecticut where their parents are also teachers. Grace was always the quiet sister the resided within the shadow of her younger and wilder sister Nica until a bullet took her life and left Grace suddenly alone. She is troubled by not only her absence, the realization on how much she relied upon her sister but also a sense of bewilderment about who she is supposed to be without her. Grace develops a pill habit that quickly spirals out of control causing her to drop out of college and remain at home. After Nica’s death is pinned on a student who recently committed suicide, Grace doesn’t believe it to be true. After she finds evidence that he couldn’t possibly have killed her she determines it’s up to her to find out who really did.Dark Rooms is a debut novel and while it had some pacing issues and the occasional hiccup, it was quite the engrossing tale. As far as the previously mentioned hiccups, the investigation itself which spans the majority of the novel felt generally ‘off’. When Grace would discover a clue she would either connect the dots in a way that left me completely confounded or would often jump to the strangest and most outlandish conclusions. View Spoiler » The one saving grace is that the main character recognized exactly what she was doing:‘I’ve been pretending I know, careening from conviction to conviction like a human pinball, setting off every light and spark and bell, absolutely positive about one thing, then absolutely positive about another. But, the truth is, the only thing I’m absolutely positive about is that I don’t know anything at all.’It put a new spin on her outlandish conclusions: she was desperate and grasping at straws to find the answers to her sisters death that was plaguing her with uneasiness. There was also another (spoilery) reason for her desperation to complete the investigation and when you took a step back and really looked at what she was going through it ended up making at least a modicum of sense in the madness. The secrets and reasoning behind Nica’s death were dark enough to live up to the title but the additions regarding Nica being her mothers muse in her photography and the lines that were constantly being crossed with her practically stalking her to take candid photos felt a bit gratuitous in the end. This story was a complete knockout as far as the writing is concerned and is definitely worth a read for that alone.Dark Rooms is a mixture of somber tales in suburbia, a murder/mystery thriller and a coming of age novel. Comparisons to The Secret History, Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and even Megan Abbott are what initially intrigued me about this novel. The similarities to Sharp Objects is fairly accurate with the story of the seemingly normal teenage girls and the dark family secrets that inevitably change their very makeup but didn’t completely live up to that comparison. All in all, big name comparisons generally always do the book a disservice and while Dark Rooms isn’t a perfect clone, fans of those novels will definitely find some thrill within these pages as I certainly did.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If this book did nothing else it made me so incredibly grateful for the mother I have. Not that my family was perfect by any means but the mother in this book is a piece of work. Seriously she makes Joan Crawford look like a nominee for mother of the year. grace is the eldest, the quiet sister, the good one. Nica, one year younger is popular, considered by many to be wild. Despite these differences the sisters were close, so when Nica doesn't return home one night and is found dead the next morning it sends Grace into a tailspin.This is much more than a murder mystery, it is about detrimental secrets that come back to haunt, about a woman who is selfish beyond measure, young love and a young woman finding answers, finding peace, a resolution and finally coming into her own.A first novel that is very well done. There are many twists and turns, revelations and red herrings, and I just kept turning the pages. Not sure why this book resonated so with me but I really liked and understood the character of Grace, and felt sorry for the young Nica. Interesting and suspenseful, a very good debut mystery.ARC from publisher.