Curating Suspense Tip #2

Raise the Stakes
One of the fastest ways to deepen suspense is to increase what your character stands to lose—and to do it in layers. Begin with a concrete, relatable risk: losing a job, getting evicted, missing a deadline. These give readers something solid to latch onto.

Then add a secondary consequence that strikes closer to the heart. Maybe failure damages a relationship, exposes a long-buried insecurity, or forces the character to admit something they’ve been avoiding. When the threat becomes both external and internal, tension rises naturally.
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As the story progresses, stack the pressure from multiple angles—financial, emotional, moral. The goal is to box the character in so that every choice carries weight. When consequences collide, readers feel the squeeze.

​A thorough book review of a New York Times Best Seller!

A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham
★ ★ ★.75 Worth reading
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“A Flicker in the Dark” is about Chole Davis, a young girl who is living an idyllic life in Louisiana with her family the summer she turns twelve. However, the lively close-knit community is shaken to its core when one by one, teenage girls begin to disappear without explanation. Chloe’s biggest fear is that she’ll be the next to fall victim to this mysterious villain. That is until she discovers that the cause of all her fears is, in fact,  living in her very own house. Chloe’s father is accused, convicted, and hauled away to jail, never to be heard from again.
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Now, it’s nearly 20 years later and Chloe is a therapist, barely able to cope with her own past, but still striving to help others. With a wedding in the works, Chloe is seemingly happier than ever until more girls begin to mysteriously go missing. Chloe is somehow at the center of the disappearances and is determined to finally get to the bottom of what happened that awful summer all those years ago. Taking matters into her own hands, and with the help of an off-beat reporter, Chloe begins her own investigation. 
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The beginning of this is a little slow. I really just wanted to know what happened with Chloe’s father and the first girls that went missing, but it was a little drawn out. I understand that the author probably wanted to create more suspense with this, but I felt there was enough of that in the second half with some decent twists and unexpected turns. The timelines bounced back and forth between the present and 20 years earlier, which usually works for me, but it made me feel a bit disconnected from the main character. I also felt her actions were a little far-fetched at times. 
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What worked? The pacing really picked up about halfway through. I appreciated the twists and I eventually did get caught up in the suspense of it all. There was no chance of not finishing it. I absolutely had to know what happened.
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What didn’t work? The main character, a woman dealing with trauma, is made unreliable because of her habit of self-medicating — a trope that is really starting to feel overdone and is overall a little surface-level.
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Ultimately, I blew through the second half and found it decently entertaining. I’m rating it 3.75 out of 5 stars, and worth reading!