Book Review: ‘My Dearest Darkest’ by Kayla Cottingham

We seem to be experiencing a trend in the books featured in the finale for every season of the podcast: a disappointment. I’m sad to say that ‘My Dearest Darkest’ didn’t break this trend in any way.

Wilder Girls meets The Craft in this Sapphic horror debut that asks: what price would you be willing to pay to achieve your deepest desires?

Finch Chamberlin is the newest transfer student to the ultra-competitive Ulalume Academy... but she's also not what she seems. Months before school started, Finch and her parents got into an accident that should have left her dead at the bottom of the river. But something monstrous, and ancient, and terrifying, wouldn't let her drown. Finch doesn't know why she woke up after her heart stopped, but since dying she's felt a constant pull from the school and the surrounding town of Rainwater, like something on the island is calling to her.

Selena St. Clair sees right through Finch, and she knows something is seriously wrong with her. But despite Selena's suspicion, she feels drawn to Finch and has a sinking feeling that from now on the two will be inexplicably linked to one another.

One night Finch, Selena, and her friends accidentally summon a carnivorous creature of immense power in the depths of the school. It promises to grant every desire the girls have kept locked away in their insecure hearts—beauty, power, adoration—in exchange for a price: human body parts. But as the cost of their wanting becomes more deadly, Finch and Selena must learn to work together to stop the horror they unleashed, before it consumes the entire island.

With an exclusive boarding school setting, a mysterious dark creature, and references to ‘The Craft’ and Rory power’s ‘Wilder Girls’, I was sure this was going to be a hit. It really missed the mark for me, however.

Told in a version close third person, even though ‘My Dearest Darkest’ focuses on two main characters: Finch and Selena, it also skips to other characters, but it does so very fleetingly and no very closely. Finch is clearly the more prominent protagonist but I felt nothing from her. She’d recently lost both her parents in a horrific accident and yet there was no grief, or even a point being made about her absence of grief, she just felt guilty. Finch was supposed to be a genius pianist who’d finally got into her dream school, and yet she played maybe 4 time sin the novel and I never felt anything from her - it vanished the second her crush appeared. Even her crush came across in a rather clunky way - I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t believe Finch. She felt like a chess piece being moved by the author.

I honestly spent most of the novel wishing that it was Simon’s novel. He was worthy of being a protagonist. Samira too! They both had agency, personality outside of romantic interests, and Simon’s knowledge and interests in cryptids would have really added something to the unveiling of the mystery and villain in the novel.

The autumn and winter Maine setting with the big, old boarding school that has a monster in the basement are all big hit points - there was so much potential and maybe my expectations were just too high, but it wasn’t what I think this novel could have been.

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Written by Sophie