{{NEW RELEASE & REVIEW}} DARK THINGS By Courtney Evan Tate (Courtney Cole)


Title:  SUCH DARK THINGS
Author:  Courtney Evan Tate (Courtney Cole) 
Genre:  Psychological Thriller 
Publisher:  Mira (Harper Collins) 
Release Date:  March 20, 2018

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.


***ARC provided in exchange for an honest review -Michelle/Scandalous Book Blog***

Title: Such Dark Things
Author : Courtney Evans Tate
Stars: 4 Scandalous Kisses

A gripping dark  read ! This book threw me into a turmoil and i wasn't sure where the story line was heading and how this was going to end which only made the book even better.  The story is told in past and present from both Corinne and Jude point of views. There is anticipation and suspense all the way through which kept me intrigued. 

Corinne is a busy physician in the ER department , been happily married to Jude for that long that they have started to take each other for granted, working long hours and no sex life is taking its toll on them both. Corinne's father murdered people right in front of her at a young age but there are gaps and a blackness that is stopping her from recovering from this and her life starts to spin out of control when she is found with her wrists slit, being admitted to hospital leaves her wondering when this is all going to end.  The only people she can rely on are her husband and her sister and she is now alone in this hospital with only her nightmares keeping her company.

Jude is a successful handsome man, he is trying his best to help Corinne deal with her past but its not easy when she cant explain or remember what she has been through. He helps people everyday but cant help his wife !  His marriage is 
slipping away and temptation is there right in front of him in the name of a waitress called Zoe. Jude and his brother Michael visit the café most days and Zoe seems to know how to get to him. Feeling lonely and unloved it doesn't take much for him to succumb. 

There is so much going on in each of their lives, so much pain and heartache, pasts and temptation. will the truth come out, can the trust still be there ? Things aren't always what they seem to be!

I felt this book was fast paced and i was a little confused at times with the timeline but understandable once i finished the book.  You will love and hate the Corinne and Jude's characters for different reasons but i was still rooting for them. There are twists that will be unexpected and  Im sure by reading all the reviews you can see that this book wont be loved by everyone, have an open mind, get reading and make your own mind up, I'm glad I did.


Prologue-
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 stiches.
“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 dissociative 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.”



Google Play:  http://bit.ly/2D107mv


Courtney Cole
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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