At forty-three, Sonia has a life that many envy. She's beautiful, talented, and connected. Her husband is a wealthy doctor. Her daughter is at university. She has a beautiful house on the Thames and yet...she can't shake the feeling that there's something missing from her life. When fifteen year old Jez, her friend's nephew, swings by to borrow an album from Sonia, everything clicks into place. She needs Jez and she'll stop at nothing to keep him with her, even if it means sacrificing everything.

I read KEPT IN THE DARK by Penny Hancock with tears threatening to spill, my pillow clutched to my chest, and my heart aching for the characters from chapter one. It's that good.

Sonia's obsession with the beautiful teenage boy is as compelling as it is creepy, and throughout, Sonia struggles to justify her actions to herself. It's this struggle between her conscious and her need to keep Jez that pulls the reader into the murky depths of Sonia's past, revealing the core of her desire and her character. Penny Hancock's use of the river Thames perfectly ties to Sonia's emotions so that the river itself becomes an extension of Sonia's need for Jez and the memories that haunt her. Beautifully evocative, suspenseful, and heartbreaking, KEPT IN THE DARK reveals how the currents of the past lurk dangerous and deadly beneath the surface.