A review by szara
The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

3.0

Oh, it's so hard for me to rate this book! I considered DNF-ing it for the first 30% of it, then the middle was excellent, and the ending was perfectly mediocre. I was really into the world-building and the mystery plot of it all. The pacing was great when it comes to the growing tension and the build-up to the big reveal. Unfortunately, I didn't like the characters and I found it hard to root for them in their struggles because of that. I have such mixed feelings about this story, there were many moments that had me gasping at plot twists or awing at the writing choices used for some of the reveals. But then there were moments when I had to make myself continue because I just didn't enjoy being in Ambrose's head (the novel is written in first person with Ambrose's POV) and it was pretty exhausting to keep going while not much was happening with the mystery plot. This book has all the ingredients for a hypothetical favorite novel of mine – sci-fi set in space with queer romance and elements of horror – but unfortunately the flavoring wasn't all to my taste, I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did in the end.