The Sunday Times described "What they do in the Dark" as: 'One of the most masterly, disturbing pieces of fiction I have read in a long while . . . will send shivers down your spine . . . will leave you haunted long after you've read the final page.' The complete antithesis of what I thought.

I picked up this novel after Marie Claire put it as their 'must read book of the month'. I had high hopes for the book as it was described full of nostalgia of 'penny sweets' in Yorkshire in the 1970's (I think it might be 1976?) as well as the dark tale that lay within the book. Both my parents had their youth in the 70's in Yorkshire and I love hearing stories of what they used to get up to, especially of the summer of '76. With this in mind I envisaged a book that could give me a proper insight into the 70's despite the dark atmosphere of the book. Instead, I read a book that was not only dark but in my opinion quite crude and vulgar. I could not understand why most things happened as the plot didn't hold much substance. The climax of the story came out of nowhere and made me feeling disturbed.In general the whole of the novel made me feel disturbed. The author succeeded in creating 2 dimensional characters that seemed to change with every chapter. I don't know if it is because I did not grow up in the 1970's and therefore did not grasp the sense polar opposites between the two characters properly, but even so, a book should be able to captivate any reader and this did not happen when I read this novel. I will also never be taking advice from Marie Claire's book club again :)

I would not recommend this book to anyone AT ALL !