Kept in the Dark

by Penny Hancock

At the house next door, respectability can hide all manner of sins
When her neighbor's fifteen-year-old nephew goes missing, Sonia is the last person that anyone would suspect. At forty-three, she is a strikingly attractive wife and mother. And like the River House, her lovely home overlooking the Thames, Sonia's life is a picture of perfection and normalcy--until she meets Jez. From the moment he shows up on Sonia's doorstep, the gorgeous teenage boy awakens a torrent of memories that threaten to reveal a terrifying truth. Drawn to Jez by a compulsion that she scarcely understands, Sonia takes him captive--prepared to sacrifice everything to keep him.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Suspense, Adult, Book Club

346 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 21, 2012

About the author

Penny grew up in South East London and then did an English degree in Newcastle Upon Tyne. For several years she taught English as a foreign language in Italy, Greece and Morocco. She then took a PGCE, got a job as a Primary school teacher in an inner city London school, and moved into her partner Andy’s short-life house in East London, which is now part of the hardcore under the M11 that links their new home in Cambridge with her birth place in Greenwich!

While bringing up their three children, she continued to teach in primary schools, taught English to asylum seekers, and ran adult education classes in writing. She also wrote articles for various papers (The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Ed, The Sunday Express magazine, and Child Education, amongst others) specialising in family and education. Penny has also written readers for English language learners for Cambridge University Press, and a Primary English course for children published by Longmans. It was an Arvon writing course and an MA in creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University that encouraged her to complete her first novel.

Source: http://pennyhancock.com/bio/

Reviews

[Krystin | TheF*ckingTwist · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book Blog | Bookstagram

Ugh, what the fuck did I just read?



This missed the mark on being a psychological thriller in a big way - it's basically borderline pedophilia fiction.

I was so uncomfortable the entire time reading this. I'm still uncomfortable thinking about it to write this review.

Middle-aged Sonia - unhappily married with a grown daughter - plies 15-year-old Jez with drugged alcohol in order to make him compliant so she can hold him captive in her home because he reminds her of her first real love, Seb, who died when they were teens and also happened to be her older brother.

So, you know... that's fucking gross all the way around.

Sonia gave me the worst case of heeby-jeebies I've ever had.

I knew from reviews that this would be a messed-up story, but I thought that was in the context of the genre - disturbing moments, maybe Sonia trying to escape discovery. Instead, it's honestly just descriptions about an adult licking the stomach of a child, sucking his fingers, touching his...



And when Sonia has to be around other adults, she spends all her time fantasizing, in detail, about sexually assaulting that kidnapped child again as soon as she can get back to him. There is NOTHING ELSE going on in this novel. WTF.

It's just so many shades of wrong, wrong, WRONG.

Listen, I'm no prude. The furthest thing from it. I love novels that go there and don't beat around the bush. But this... this was a totally different, disgusting, fucked up thing. How is this seriously the direction the plot took? Who approved this?

Have you ever gotten sucked in by a news story about a teacher that has slept with a student? Have you ever wondered what that woman was thinking and how she convinced herself that fucking a child was an okay thing to do? Then this is the book for you.

But it was not the book for me.

⭐ | 1 star

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not put this book down - I threw it across the room. Probably a poor choice as I was using an e-reader, but since I couldn't punch every character in this train wreck, throwing the book was an acceptable alternative.

Basically, a nutjob of a woman keeps a teenage boy trapped in her house because he reminds her of her dead brother. Unfortunately, the boy is not overly bright, and can't seem to make the connection that every time Crazypants gives him anything to eat or drink, he passes out and wakes up to her fondling him awkwardly. STOP EATING THE FOOD, IDIOT!
Apparently, Crazypants is still obsessed with her dead brother to the point where she refuses to move from her childhood home, because that's where her sainted brother used to have sex with her. When they weren't having sex on a homemade raft in the middle of the river, that is. Yes, you read that right. And where were the parents? Oh, they were busy sending Sainted Brother to boarding school and pretending that the whole thing never happened. Because there's no way that could be a bad idea. Sainted Brother would NEVER hatch a twisted, dangerous plan to have Crazypants bust him out of boarding school, right?
Ugh, I could go on about the stupidity of every single character, but frankly I've used all the time I'm willing to spend on this book. Save yourself and read something else.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 ⭐ = Good.
This certainly included controversial subjects and was slightly uncomfortable to read at times. There may be some of you who would be upset by the material.
For me, a book is a book. It is fiction. I suppose it is the case that if anything is personal to yourself and your experiences, anything can be offensive.
It was unusual to have a female as the abuser and in a strange way, this kind of made the storyline all the more disturbing.
I wasn't over keen on the ending as felt it ended a little abruptly. Maybe this was intentional though.
This book certainly kept my interest.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman who is struggling to go forward in life due to events of the past haunting her consciousness and those memories are also vague and will slowly become a realization.
She starts a fixation and obsession with one man a teenager, with an objective to rekindle a long gone love and very soon her actions will come to fruition sooner than expected. The story takes you through her behavior and thoughts and bonds you with the questions what will she do next? That expectation on the forthcoming motion of things keeps you immersed into the story which would be finished in no time at all. The story flows well, no grand story telling or eloquent prose used a page-turning suspenseful psychological tale. The story shifts to memories of what had taken place with her love of the past. There is a twist also in the tale that wraps up the story neatly to the real root of her state of mind.

Also appears at my web page @ more2read

[Melanie Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times effectively disturbing, other times it just drags and seems implausible in a way that interferes with one's ability to get lost in the story. Unfortunately none of the main characters or their lives are particularly interesting, and so the time spent on them feels wasted, and then main point of the novel seems to be how Sonia will manage to keep Jez and avoid discovery. The fact that she manages to do so for a little over an entire week is a bit of a stretch. There is a shocking reveal at the end, but then this reveal doesn't really shed much light on anything else in the book, other than how messed up everyone and everything is. Feels like it started off with some interesting ideas, but the author didn't figure out what she was doing until the end. At which point she should've sat down and rewritten the whole thing.

[Daffy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this is a terrific read. A psychological thriller, the narrative slowly and gently unfolds. The writing is precise and assured and I felt in good hands, even though the subject matter, a middle aged woman who abducts a teenage boy, is something that would usually make me feel uncomfortable. Sonia, the abductor, though clearly disturbed by events in her past, is sympathetically portrayed, and all the characters are believable. The denouement made me to gasp and I didn't see it coming at all, but when it came I couldn't help feeling "of course"! It's set by the river at Greenwich and the magnificance and menace of the Thames on that stretch is brilliantly evoked, and Ms Hancock effectively captures the spirit of the place in her descriptions of Greenwich itself. More please!

[Autumn · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

Grossed me out! I understood going in that it was about a middle aged woman that kidnaps a teenaged boy. While that's kind of ew, I thought maybe it might get a Gillian Flynn type treatment. The subject matter is just so messed up, but the writing is awesome and the characters are train wrecks but you love them anyway. This wasn't that book. The main character would drug the boy then do things like lick his stomach. When she got to sucking his earlobe, that was enough for me.

[Lou Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now here's an interesting book....if a little far fetched and 'ewww'. Why so interesting? Because it's all based round modern day Greenwich, along the Thames path, where James and I regularly walk. It was one of the main reasons I picked up the book in Waterstones, and I did love the references to places that really exist (the power station, the market, the foot tunnel, Rhodes bakery where James gets his coffee on the way to work). I now need to try and work out which house is "River House" although I'm not sure that this building is real.
Although it was personally interesting to recognise the setting, it's quite an uncomfortable story, about a woman severely impacted emotionally by her past who ends up kidnapping and terrorising a young teenage nephew of a friend (and also killing said friend and dumping her in the Thames). Unusual to have a female villain in this type of novel and maybe this is what I found slightly unbelievable about it, given that Sonia is a mother herself and had managed to live her life "normally" for a good 20+ years.
But I liked it, so 3* it is and particularly recommended for anyone who knows the Thames Path around Greenwich.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am due on a 9 hour flight back from holiday, the Republic of Consciousness longlisted books that I brought with me to re-read for the shortlist judging session are so good I have devoured them all, my daughter has bagsied the Kindle and, bizarrely, there is no bookshop in the area.

It's time for the hotels 'left behind books' collection.

They had Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections but I've already made by 'most overblown novel by a US male author' award for 2017 (joint to 4 3 2 1 and The Nix) so I didn't want to open that up to a new contender.

So I was left with the Richard & Judy book club choice, and the consequent anticipation of a pleasant, if lightweight, read.

Which isn't exactly what I got - that the most popular reviews on GR starts 'Ugh, what the **** did I just read?', rather summed this up. Some wonderful descriptions of life on the banks of the Thames (echoes of Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore), but I really couldn't buy middle-aged Sonia, howeveer disturbed her teenage relation with a boy (very disturbed, given it was her brother), suddenly turning into an expert kidnapper, decades later, of another teenage boy and then a murderer of her friend).

Memo to self - take more books (or buy a Kindle) next time. Or lobby the people of Rodney Bay to get a bookshop!

[Christie (The Ludic Reader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Penny Hancock’s debut novel Kept in the Dark in one breathless gulp. I absolutely couldn’t put it down. I love it when that happens.

Sonia lives in a house next to the Thames. Her husband, Greg, is a lecturing neurosurgeon; her daughter, Kit, is a student at university and Sonia herself is a vocal coach. From the outside looking in, it would appear that Sonia has it all. It’s pretty obvious, though, that Sonia isn’t entirely sane. When the nephew of a friend drops by to pick up an album, Sonia plies him with wine, then drugs him and locks him upstairs in the sound proof music studio.

Jez is just fifteen. He’s in London visiting his Aunt Helen and Uncle Mick and applying to colleges. His mother, Maria, lives in Paris. Sonia is taken with Jez immediately.

His dark fringe has fallen across one eye. He flicks it back, and looks at me from under long, perfectly formed black eyebrows. I notice his sinuous neck with its smooth Adam’s apple. There’s a triangular dip where his throat descends towards his sternum. His skin has a sheen on it that I’d like to touch. He’s of adult proportions yet everything about him is glossy and new.

The novel’s first person narrative is so creepy and claustrophobic. We get to watch as Sonia justifies her behavior and work through the endless complications of keeping a fifteen-year-old boy captive. First of all, what happens when her husband arrives home from his business trip? What will she do when her daughter and her boyfriend come home from university. And then there’s Seb. He’s clearly someone from her past and Jez obviously reminds her of him, but who is he? Sonia says he was “the most beautiful creature that ever walked upon the earth.” Hancock seamlessly weaves Sonia’s present with her past and the mystery of Seb is equally as compelling as Jez’s fate.

There is a second narrator: Helen. Jez’s aunt is a bit of a mess in her own way. Jez’s disappearance while under her care has thrown Helen’s life into turmoil. When her sister arrives from Paris and the police get involved, Helen feels more like a suspect than a relative.

This book was so good. S.J. Watson, author of Before I Go to Sleep, sang its praises and I have to say I agree with Mr. Watson. Sonia’s midlife crisis – a rather strained relationship with her daughter; a sexless marriage; a difficult mother; and the house she grew up in that she vows never to leave despite the fact that her husband wants to sell and move to Geneva all seem to be conspiring against her. But none of it is convoluted or silly. The plot unravels like a dream that is both terrifying and strangely erotic.

Highly recommended.

[Linda Hardy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a story, Sonia is middle aged, husband often works away, daughter away at university, she takes an interest in 15 year old music student Jez, he arrives at her house to borrow an album, but Sonia decides to not let him leave, read the lengths she will go to stop anyone finding Jez including murder, scary story in a way, makes you think what tips people over the edge into doing something like this.

[Valerie]

I won this book through a Goodreads Giveaway on June 10th. I never received the book and therefore won't be reading and rating it.

[Succubi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was sooooo freaking boring! I struggled to finish the damn thing!

[Bernadette Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a Library Reading Group read for the group that I am in. I didn't get it finished in time and I can't really remember what the book got as an overall score. I gave the story a 4 stars or 8/10.

I quite enjoyed the story and found it an easy read that had me gripped and wanting to know more about what was happening.

Sonia is almost living two lives, the life of the here and now and the life she had as a teenager with all the angst that it entails. Told in shortish chapters this story fairly moves along mixing the past and present seamlessly. As the past is revealed we realise that what has happened recently is even more significant to Sonia, in some ways it's as though she's still living in the past. Whether that can be used as an excuse for what she has done is another matter. I must admit that I did feel sorry for Sonia in some ways, but then at other times I wanted to shake her as if to wake her up and make her realise that she was acting completely out of character and she should never have done what she had. She did make some odd choices, but she was a woman left with few options as things began to close in around her.

This is a perfect reading group read as there is quite a lot than can be discussed among the pages of this psychological thriller.

[Marianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anche se per molti versi più che un thriller all'inizio sembrava un romanzo psicologico, a me è piaciuto tantissimo, una delle migliori letture del 2021. Mi ha tenuta col fiato sospeso e spesso non volevo mettere via il libro per continuare la storia.
P.S. Nuova crush letteraria!

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eloquent psychological thriller set upon the River Thames. It touched on several of my emotions that produced goosebumps and gasps. I’m looking forward to reading more from author Penny Hancock.

[Tamara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leider konnte mich das Buch überhaupt nicht überzeugen. Der Klapptext war super, konnte aber sein Versprechen leider nicht halten.

Es war langatmig, voraussehbar und leider auch etwas langweilig. Ein bisschen mehr tiefe hätte der Story nicht geschadet.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book starts well, but then quickly deteriorates into a well-written but ultimately lifeless and icky little endeavour. The writing is brisk and clean, but the whole thing was just a bit too British for me - and this is coming from someone who has lived in England her whole life. It's a dark and disturbing little novel, but it's utterly bloodless and restrained in a way that should be more effective, but also leaves it feeling toothless and contradictory, a psychological thriller that wants to be about sexual obsession and a descent into madness but feels almost jokingly middle-class.

In an attempt to keep everything harmonious, as well, Hancock has her characters behave in the most ridiculous ways. So, as the blurb says, Sonia kidnaps Jez by keeping him in the house, drugging him and lying to him. I don't consider myself a very streetwise person, but by the time I'd fallen into a druggy sleep several times, been tied up and being repeatedly told that I can't leave the house by a woman that seems more than a little unstable, would I really assume that it was in the name of a birthday party? Honest to God, I know Hancock tried to explain it by saying that Jez was sheltered and naive, but there's sheltered and naive and then there's apparently the type of fifteen-year-old that lacks even the most basic comprehensive skills and has never turned on a TV or read a newspaper. I assume it was an attempt to keep any blood or violence out of the novel, as Jez fighting back would've necessitated, but instead it just seemed ludicrous bordering on funny.

Speaking of which, the supposedly sexually charged flashbacks of Sonia and her obsession from the past, Seb, having sex, kissing and practicing a kind of thirteen-year-old version of BDSM or whatever were cringey rather than atmospheric. ("No sex, please, we're British!") Hancock's writing is definitely good, the pacing is quick and compelling, but the whole thing is just a vague type of icky, like a thin layer of sticky substance I want to wash off, instead of a deeply disturbing and intense experience. Sonia insists she's not violent, nor does she want to hurt Jez, but the total lack of introspection in her voice just leaves the thing feeling sort of half-baked and underdone.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Rating 3 / 5
Format Paperback

I’m very torn by this book. I read a couple of reviews before I started reading and it was billed very much as an atmospheric thriller. That it is.

It is also very creepy and frankly odd. The story follows Sonia who develops an obsession with her friends nephew, Jez. She keeps Jez against his will and the story begins to unpick Sonia’s history.

She’s clearly a troubled woman, and much focus is given to her relationship as a child with Seb. I have to say I worked out the Seb ‘twist’ early on (there was a scene that gave it away for me) but I think many readers will gloss over the hint and not realise until the end. The book unpicks the many dysfunctional relationships that Sonia has, be it with Seb, her daughter Kit or her husband and friends. However the book doesn’t really examine the root cause of the dysfunction.

I found the relationship with her husband the oddest. There didn’t seem to be much evidence or reason as to why he still wants her, despite her behaviour and complete disinterest. I guess perhaps there was a control element that he later lost when he seeks to persuade her to sell the River House. I’m not sure.

The ending was deeply unsatisfying, you’re not left entirely sure what the outcome was for both Jez and Sonia.

I always think the test of a good book is whether you would want to read a book by the author again. I’m just not sure. I didn’t even bother to read the taster at the back of this book for Hancock’s next novel

[Ainur · Rating 3 out of 5]

One gif that perfectly summed up my feelings for this book;



So, when I read the synopsis of this book, I never thought that it can be more disturbing than it actually is. Everytime I thought okay, the character is so messed up, then she ended up surprising me by being more deranged than she already was.

This story is dark, it’s disturbing but also amazing for me. I like the storyline, I like that the author wrote from two sides of stories; Sonia and Helen. I just love a good plot twist. I like that the story fits perfectly, but I was confused sometimes from the flashback because I can’t tell the sequence of it.

Overall, I’m this close of throwing this book away due to its freakiness, but well, it’s a total worth read. The kind of disturbing that you simply cannot put it down.

Memories creep up on me. Push up against me the way a cat rubs itself against your leg, purring, refusing to be ignored. Feelings swamp me out of the blue. There’s nostalgia sometimes. More often there’s a startling upsurge of guilt, shame, regret.

[Jenny Benn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mildly disturbing psychological drama about a woman who becomes obsessed with a teenage boy in an unconscious effort to resolve a dysfunctional past relationship. The book begins with the boy arriving at her house to borrow a music CD from her husband. She invites him in, gets him drunk and keeps him captive in the house. The narrative revolves around her warped emotions and troubled memories. Meanwhile the boy's relatives are trying to find him and a police search is underway.

It was an interesting read, but not gripping. I didn't relate to the main character and wanted her to get caught. The teenage boy's behaviour was also unrealistic for me. So it felt like an unbelievable story, but I still wanted to find out what happened. An unexpected revelation in the end, but somehow it didn't have the impact it should have.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I checked this book as "Its ok". I really wanted to like it, but I just could not get in to it. I finished it in the hopes that something big would happen. The description compared it to Gone Girl but I don't see anything similar there at all. No great plot twists. Remotely unlikeable characters and two person point of view is about all they have in common. The story follows a woman who is obviously sick in the head, basically kidnaps a boy because she quickly becomes obsessed with him and he reminds her of a boy from her youth she had similar feelings for. The other voice is her friend and the boy's Aunt who has issues of her own. If you are looking for a slow paced, nothing really happens, read I would reccommend this to you, but otherwise skip it.

[Fifi LaFleur · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an ok read. There is really nothing very likeable about the two characters that have voices in this book. One is having a psychotic break and the other an intensely self absorbed midlife crisis about 10 years too soon. The teen involved is ridiculously naive and I don't entirely believe him.

I thought it was interesting and while I guessed the main plot line from the start, the journey with this nut bar who utterly rationalizes all her terrible decisions is kind of fascinating.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effectively creepy story of a woman (the narrator) who takes a 15 year old visitor hostage. Some genuinely suprising developments, including a couple of reveals in the last couple of chapters. Nice change to usual whodunnit thrillers. I think you'd enjoy this if you liked The Girl on the Train.

[Nick Davies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, quite a fucked-up story. I was initially made uncomfortable by the reverse-Lolita events early in the book, a woman in her forties abducting a fifteen year-old boy and keeping him captive in her home, but as the story developed (and thankfully as the motives for this abduction became clearly less about sexual attraction and more about something more complicated) my dislike changed to being aimed at not just the main protagonist, but also almost every other character in the book.

The novel tries to provide, through flashbacks of her own childhood, a justification for this woman's inconceivable behaviours. I don't know whether as a man it wasn't every going to convince me, I don't know if I'm just too logical a person... but I just felt that the way the novel got more and more twisted, and the more (to mix metaphors somewhat oddly) this woman's life unravelled, it got utterly ridiculous and I can't think of any convincing reason why her schemes could not have been abandoned relatively benignly in advance of a final fifty pages which was complete batshit crazy.

[Clarabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'est peu de dire que j'enchaîne les lectures avec des personnages cinglés et des histoires bizarres ! Cette fois encore, une femme en pleine dépression franchit la ligne jaune et séquestre un môme de 16 ans dans son garage. Sa famille s'inquiète, la police enquête. Mais elle reste imperturbable, conservant une parfaite maîtrise de la situation. Je pourrais vous dire que le ton est glaçant, l'atmosphère étouffante et le désarroi immense. Sauf que le bouquin fouille également dans vos entrailles et vous noue l'estomac en infusant une peur panique indéchiffrable. *** 3.5 stars ***
http://blogclarabel.canalblog.com/arc...

[Pauline B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Déception.

Je termine à l'instant ce livre, et je ne comprends pas trop son but, sa "morale", ou un quelconque message que l'auteur aurait voulu véhiculé. Peut-être n'y en a-t-il aucun.

La trame est trop improbable, les personnages peu réalistes dans leurs réactions, leur personnalité.. en particulier Jez et Sonia.
J'adore les personnages unreliable, où le vrai se mélange au faux... mais dans ce cas, cela n'a pas collé du tout. Dommage.

Malgré tout, ce livre s'est lu assez rapidement, heureusement.

[Debbie Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exploring the dark side of human nature and the foibles within, this story weaves itself into your mind and doesn’t let go until the last few pages. The main character is compellingly flawed from the very start of the book and I couldn’t wait to see how her story unravelled!!

[Nicole Sackin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woah.
This book is a whirlwind. The story is both fascinating and horrifying beginning to end. I couldn't put it down.
I recommend this for people who also like Netflix series about psychopaths.