Title: Darker Days

Author: Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Bantam

Publication Date: 23rd October 2025

Rating: 4.5/5

Cover:

Summary:

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 . . .

Review:

I’m so glad I read Darker Days this month – I was hoping for a creepy, chilling and original bit of horror fiction and that is exactly what I got. There is a very physical and intense sense of menace and foreboding right from the very beginning, long before we, as readers, fully understand just what is happening here on Bird Street and the particular ‘rules’ of the titular Darker Days. The first third of the book is more of a slow burning and almost deceptively calm build up of tension as more and more is slowly revealed about this group of strange and mysterious neighbours – then things get pretty dark and terrifying rather quickly and the book becomes a sort of rollercoaster of shock and psychological horror. It is supremely well written, with a slightly off kilter, sometimes surreal, quality which makes it all the more uneasy and which I absolutely loved. I also loved that more than once my assessments of certain characters as being perhaps more ‘good’ or moral was totally subverted. Darker Days has an incredibly unique and completely fascinating premise and set up and it also took some sharp twists and turns that I genuinely didn’t see coming. It is a sinister, clever, almost otherworldly yet entirely rooted in the complexities of human nature story of justice, morality, entitlement, class and the value of a life. I’ve never read anything like it and would highly recommend it for fans of smart and unnerving atmospheric horror. 

★★★★.5 

Thank you so much to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for inviting me on this tour and organising it. I kindly received a copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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