Following the deaths of her husband, Corey, and ten year old daughter Ellie in a traffic accident, author Abby Miller sinks ever deeper into depression. She contemplates suicide as a way to be with them, and to end her unrelenting pain.
In a last desperate effort to find peace, she drives to Loon Lake where they last vacationed together, wanting to believe they will be waiting for her there. At least in spirit. Barring that, the pills Doctor Gregory gave her to help her sleep, are in her purse.
The cabin at Loon Lake was her and Corey’s secret hideaway, and not even Abby’s sister, Karen, to whom she is close, knows where it is. But someone else does. He is one of three men who have escaped from Pennington prison. They are dangerous predators who will stop at nothing to get what they want - and to keep from going back to prison. Having already committed the worst of crimes, they have nothing to lose.
Unknowingly, Abby is on a collision course with evil itself. And the decision of whether to live or die will soon be wrenched from her hands.
Reviews: THE DEEPEST DARK ~ “…Joan Hall Hovey knows suspense. She keeps it simmering in every scene she writes and knows just the right moments to turn up the heat and bring it all to a boil. She also knows character, creating richly layered people to populate her books, sometimes with no more than a single sentence stocked with perfectly chosen descriptive words or phrases. THE DEEPEST DARK is a terrific suspense novel.†James Hankins, author of BROTHERS AND BONES and SHADY CROSS
Readers Favorite Editorial Review Review Rating: 5 Stars Reviewed By Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers’ Favorite
The Deepest Dark by Joan Hall Hovey is a novel of suspense and terror. Abby Miller is an author. Since she lost her husband and daughter in a car accident, she has withdrawn into herself, depressed to the level where she considers taking her own life rather than live without her family. As a last ditch effort to try to pull herself together, she sets off for a break at Loon Cottage, a cottage where they had spent their last vacation. In the middle of nowhere, the cottage has no electricity, no indoor toilet and no running water – the perfect place to get away from it all. The trouble is, nobody else knows where the cottage is as it was a secret place for her and her family. Her sister Karen is furious at Abbey for not telling her where she is and for not having a mobile phone, something Abbey has fought against. Somebody knows the cottage is there, though. Three dangerous criminals are on the run from Pennington Prison and one of them has ties to the cottage. Abbey is about to meet evil in person and the choice of living or dying may just be taken out of her hands.
The Deepest dark by Joan Hall Hovey is chock full of suspense, a real page-turner that gripped me from the start. While the book is mostly about the prisoners and Abbey, it is interspersed with the stories of her sister Karen, the police who are investigating a double murder in the area and the daughter of the murdered couple. It is very skillfully woven together so I got the full picture with no jumps, no stops and starts. There is also none of the filler and fluff that so many people use to build up a word count. The writing is concise, to the point, and every word counts. Brilliantly executed, I loved it.