ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Lights Out by Louise Swanson

Lights Out by Louise Swanson will be published by Hodder & Stoughton on 5th September 2024 in hardback, eBook and audiobook. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy.

A state of emergency has been declared in the UK. From now on, at 8pm every night, all electricity cuts out.
The Government promises it’s a temporary measure. They promise they are always thinking of your safety.

But for Grace, the darkness is anything but safe.

Someone is coming into her house under its cover every night while she lies in bed upstairs, too terrified to sleep. Someone who knows her past, who knows why she has more reason to fear the dark than most…

And every morning she wakes to a new message from the intruder:

I have you in my sights. Love, The Night

But how can Grace escape, when there’s nowhere safe left to hide?

To preserve energy the government declares a state of emergency. From 8pm to 7am every night, the electricity will be shut down. No lights, no heat: people are going to suffer.

Grace is already afraid of the dark. Her childhood trauma has lasted through to adulthood. When she’s working nights at the care home she’s fine because they’ve been allowed to keep power, but on nights when she’s at home she is completely and utterly terrified, and that’s before somebody comes into her house at night and leaves strange items and cryptic notes.

It’s quite a chilling premise and it comes across initially as a thriller, but as I might have expected with Louise Swanson’s writing, it’s much more of an emotional read, focusing on feelings, reactions, childhood fears, and the effect of loss of control on a human being. I loved how much of the story seemed to be one thing and then it was something completely opposite, how Swanson’s skills as an author gently steered me from feeling ill at ease to being reassured, albeit with a menace on the loose and a hint of the malevolent to keep me on my toes.

What makes Lights Out even more gripping is that the scenario of the shut down is wholly believable. It’s only a couple of years ago that the idea was mooted for the UK, and of course there were the blackouts in the 1970s. Swanson weaves a tale around the shut down of a woman for whom darkness is genuinely the stuff of nightmares. It’s inspired and beautifully told, a story of forgiveness, understanding and salvation.

I really enjoyed Lights Out. I hope there will be more of Swanson’s adept and compelling high-concept storytelling.

Louise Swanson is the penname of bestselling author Louise Beech, who has published eight novels with Orenda Books, and a memoir, Eighteen Seconds, with Mardle. Her work has previously shortlisted for the Romantic Novel Award and the Polari Prize. She won Best’s Book of the Year with her 2019 psychological thriller Call Me Star Girl. Louise blogs regularly on louisebeech.co.uk, and is on Twitter under the name @LouiseWriter.