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Verdict: A genuinely creepy small-town ghost mystery with a strong father-daughter spine and a sharp eye for a community’s bigotry, let down by an ending a lot of readers found rushed and a sapphic romance that stays in the passenger seat.
Best for: Readers who want atmospheric YA horror with queer leads and queer parents, and who will trade a tidy explanation of the supernatural for dread, family secrets and a slow-building bond between two lonely girls.
Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — glimpses and kisses)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5 — a 3.91 Goodreads average across roughly 11,000 ratings, with the ending as the most repeated complaint)
Tropes: Small-town secrets, missing teens, ghost hunters, sapphic slow burn, suspicion-to-allies, dual POV, queer parents, family secrets, outsider girl, grief.
The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould is a standalone young adult paranormal mystery from Wednesday Books, set in Snakebite, Oregon — a rural town where teenagers are vanishing, the weather has stopped behaving, and the prime suspects are the famous TV ghost hunters who have just come home, which puts their daughter Logan on a collision course with Ashley, the girl whose boyfriend was the first to disappear.
It holds a 3.91 average across 11,028 Goodreads ratings, won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature at the 2022 Oregon Book Awards, and drew trade coverage from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal. The reviews are warm on atmosphere and family, and noticeably cooler on the last fifty pages. Both halves of that are worth understanding before you start.
What Is The Dead and the Dark About?
The Dead and the Dark is YA horror and a missing-persons mystery first, and a sapphic suspense story second. Kirkus files it as a paranormal thriller for ages 13 to 18, and that is the right shelf. The small-town setting does what small towns do in this genre — everyone knows everyone, old grudges never die, and a gay couple returning with a camera crew is exactly the kind of event that makes a closed community look for someone to blame.
Logan Ortiz-Woodley is the daughter of Brandon and Alejo, hosts of the ghost-hunting show ParaSpectors, and she arrives in Snakebite with no friends, no roots and a strong suspicion that her fathers are hiding why they are really there. Ashley Barton is a local girl who has lost her boyfriend Tristan and has felt his presence ever since, and she has every reason to assume the newcomers are part of the problem. The book alternates between the two girls, which lets it play the town’s suspicion from inside and outside at once.
What Makes This Sapphic YA Horror Mystery Work
- The atmosphere: Snakebite’s dread is the most-praised element across reader and blog reviews. “Creepy” is the recurring word, and readers credit it to slow-building unease rather than jump scares.
- Logan and her dad: The strained relationship between Logan and Brandon is the emotional core readers name most often after the setting — several say it is the part that stayed with them.
- What the book is actually about: Kirkus and School Library Journal both read it as a story about how hate shapes a town, with the supernatural serving that theme rather than replacing it.
- Queer family representation: Two married gay fathers, a lesbian lead and a small-town setting that does not pretend homophobia away. Readers repeatedly single out the dads as a highlight.
- A slow-burn connection: Logan and Ashley move from wary to allied to something more, and The Lesbian Review called them the sapphic ghost-hunting duo it had wanted to read.
Book Synopsis
Logan has spent her life on the road behind her fathers’ cameras, watching Brandon and Alejo chase haunted houses for television. When Brandon disappears into a months-long location scout in a nowhere town in eastern Oregon, and Alejo decides the family will follow him there, Logan is pulled out of Los Angeles and dropped into Snakebite — a place her parents came from and never talk about.
The timing could not be worse. Teenagers in Snakebite have started disappearing, strange weather is rolling through, and the locals have noticed that the trouble seems to have arrived at the same moment as the town’s most famous exports. Ashley Barton has more reason than anyone to want answers. Her boyfriend Tristan was the first to go missing, and she cannot shake the feeling that he has not entirely left. When Logan turns up with ghost-hunting instincts and a family everyone distrusts, Ashley has to decide whether the new girl is a suspect or the only person in town who will take her seriously.
Pushed together by the investigation, the two start digging into what Snakebite would rather keep buried — about the missing teens, about the town’s long memory for the people it drove out, and about what Logan’s fathers left behind when they fled. The deeper they go, the clearer it becomes that something in Snakebite is hungry, and that the living have been feeding it for years. What neither girl knows yet is how much of the truth she is ready to hear.
My Review
The atmosphere is the real achievement here, and I want to lead with it because it is what readers remember. Snakebite feels like a town holding its breath — isolated, suspicious, with the kind of weather that makes a place feel watched. Gould builds the dread slowly and it works; more than one blog reviewer says outright that parts of it genuinely creeped them out, which is not something YA horror always manages.
The second strength is the one I did not expect from the premise: the family. Logan’s relationship with Brandon — distant, resentful, full of things neither will say — carries more emotional weight than the romance does, and readers keep naming it as the standout. The book also takes the town’s homophobia seriously as the actual monster in the room. Kirkus and School Library Journal both land on that reading, and it is what lifts the book above a spooky-teens-in-the-woods story.
Where it struggles is the ending, and this is not a lone gripe — it is the single most repeated criticism in the Goodreads reviews. Readers call the conclusion anticlimactic, rushed, flimsy or underexplained; one reviewer said it felt as though the author had run out of pages. The supernatural threat is the weak link: at least one blog reviewer found its logic and motives thinly explained, and several readers say they guessed the central reveal early. Around that sit the secondary complaints — a slow first stretch that several readers say takes seventy-odd pages to catch, characters who withhold information past the point of plausibility, and a supporting cast that Publishers Weekly also found shallow, alongside time jumps it said hampered the pacing.
One expectation to reset: some storefronts and databases tag this as sapphic romance, and romance.io even carries an enemies-to-lovers tag. It is a horror mystery with a romance threaded through it. Logan and Ashley’s connection is sweet and grows naturally, but several readers wanted more chemistry and felt it was told rather than shown. If a love story is what drew you, calibrate; if you were worried a romance would crowd out the ghosts, relax.
My honest note: A four-star atmosphere and a four-star family story wrapped around a three-star finale. If you need a mystery to land its explanation, the last act will frustrate you; if you read horror for dread and character, Snakebite is worth the visit.
| Element | In The Dead and the Dark |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Logan Ortiz-Woodley & Ashley Barton — ghost hunters’ daughter and grieving local girl, suspicion to allies to slow-burn romance |
| Core tropes | Small-town secrets, missing teens, ghost hunters, sapphic slow burn, queer parents, dual POV |
| Setting | Snakebite, Oregon — an isolated rural town with a long memory for the people it drove out |
| Heat level | 1/5 — glimpses and kisses |
| Series | Standalone — resolves in one volume |
| Content notes | Blood, violence, murder, drowning, child death, homophobia and homophobic language, hate crimes, attempted murder, strangulation |
How Spicy Is The Dead and the Dark?
A 1/5. romance.io does index this one, and it rates the steam level “glimpses and kisses” — its lowest band. That matches the publisher’s teen age range and what readers report: the relationship between Logan and Ashley is emotional rather than physical, and no reviewer I found describes anything beyond kissing. The heat is not a draw here and is not meant to be.
The thing worth flagging in advance is not sexual content but darkness. The content notes that recur in reader reviews — hate crimes, homophobic language, violence against teenagers, drowning — are heavier than the heat rating suggests, and The Lesbian Review warns about them directly. If you want other low-heat sapphic stories with a dark supernatural edge, Youngblood is also a closed-door YA title, and Plain Bad Heroines sits just one band higher.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you read horror for slow-building dread, you want queer parents written with real complexity, you like a small-town mystery with social teeth, and you are happy with a romance that stays secondary.
You may want to skip it if: you need a supernatural threat explained to the last detail, you want the romance at the centre, you lose patience with characters keeping secrets, or a rushed final act spoils a whole book for you.
In short: excellent atmosphere and a moving family story, with an ending that divides readers more than anything else in the book.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
This is a five-year-old debut, and the discourse around it is settled rather than live. There is no viral moment. A search turned up only scattered TikTok reviews from individual readers, mostly around October reading lists, and no meaningful Reddit footprint. What it has instead is a durable backlist life: 11,028 Goodreads ratings and 2,462 written reviews, a 4.2 average across 502 Amazon ratings, a 2022 Oregon Book Award, and a small romance.io entry at 4.02 from 33 ratings. It keeps finding readers as a seasonal pick — a queer ghost story people reach for when the nights draw in. The audiobook, from Macmillan Audio, is narrated by Soneela Nankani and runs 11 hours 26 minutes; AudioFile praised how she gives every teen and adult a distinct voice.
Prefer audio? Listen to The Dead and the Dark on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The atmosphere, first and most consistently — “creepy” and “dark” are the recurring words, and readers praise the slow build of unease. Then the family: the Logan-Brandon relationship is named again and again as the emotional heart of the book, and readers value seeing two gay fathers written as flawed, specific people. The representation more broadly draws steady praise. Blog reviewers from The Lesbian Review to smaller outlets describe reading it in a sitting, and Oprah Daily pitched it as Riverdale crossed with Stephen King. A minority of readers found the ending appropriately hopeful rather than rushed — notable, because it is the exact opposite of the loudest complaint.
What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. It is the most repeated criticism in the low- and mid-star Goodreads reviews: anticlimactic, hurried, and short on explanation of what the threat actually is and wants. The mystery’s predictability is the second theme — several readers guessed the key reveal well ahead of the characters. Third: pacing. A slow first stretch, and time jumps that Publishers Weekly also flagged, alongside supporting characters it called shallow. That is worth underlining: here the trade press and the readers largely agree, which makes the criticism more trustworthy than either would be alone. Kirkus and School Library Journal, meanwhile, say nothing about the ending at all — both reviews focus on the book’s portrait of bigotry, which is the thing readers mention less. Smaller recurring notes: characters withholding information to keep the plot going, Ashley reading flatter than Logan, and a romance some found short on sparks. Opinions divide on the romance — some readers call it sweet and well-paced, others wanted more.
The standalone question worth asking first: it is a true standalone. The mystery is resolved in one volume, the story needs nothing further, and there is no sequel. If you want more of Gould, What the Woods Took (2024) is the closest bet, at 3.85 across roughly 6,400 Goodreads ratings. Her second novel, Where Echoes Die, sits a third of a star lower at 3.57, and her 2026 book, Until the Last Light Goes Out, has only a couple of hundred ratings so far — too early to call.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Dead and the Dark a romance?
Not primarily. It is a YA horror mystery with a sapphic slow-burn romance as a secondary thread. Readers call the relationship sweet, but several say it takes a back seat to the ghosts and the family story.
How spicy is The Dead and the Dark?
A 1/5. romance.io rates it “glimpses and kisses,” its lowest band, and the publisher pitches it at teen readers. No reviewer describes anything beyond kissing.
Is The Dead and the Dark scary?
Creepy more than terrifying. Readers describe slow-building dread rather than jump scares, but the content notes are heavy, including violence, drowning, child death and hate crimes.
Is The Dead and the Dark a standalone?
Yes. The mystery resolves in one book and there is no sequel. Many readers do find the ending rushed and underexplained, so expect closure rather than a fully satisfying final act.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes. Macmillan Audio published it, narrated by Soneela Nankani and running 11 hours 26 minutes. AudioFile praised her distinct voices for both the teenagers and the adults.
If You Loved The Dead and the Dark, Read These Next
For a queer ghost story built around a cursed setting and a heavier gothic atmosphere, Plain Bad Heroines is the natural next step — though its ending divides readers even more sharply. If the pull was a mystery tangled up with the supernatural and a sapphic couple at its centre, Even Though I Knew the End trades small-town Oregon for 1941 Chicago noir. And for another closed-door YA story that pairs a sapphic relationship with something undead, Youngblood sets it in a vampire boarding school.
For more in this register, browse our lesbian mystery and thriller books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
The Dead and the Dark is a debut that aims to be a ghost story, a family drama and a portrait of small-town hate all at once, and it mostly gets there. The atmosphere is genuinely unsettling, the relationship between Logan and her father carries real weight, and the book’s anger at Snakebite’s bigotry gives it a spine. It also opens slowly, leans on characters keeping secrets, and closes with a final act that a large share of readers found rushed and underexplained. If you read horror for dread and character rather than for a watertight explanation, it is worth your October. Check The Dead and the Dark on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, The Dead and the Dark ranks as an award-winning sapphic YA horror debut — atmospheric and emotionally grounded, held back by a rushed ending, and best approached for the dread and the family story rather than the romance or the mystery’s solution.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ 3.91 average across 11,028 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 2022 Oregon Book Award for YA
- ✓ Kirkus and SLJ praise its themes
- ✓ Ending is the most repeated complaint
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Suspicion turns to trust naturally
- ✓ Lesbian Review loved the duo
- ✓ Sweet, hopeful slow burn
- ✓ Secondary thread, often told not shown
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Logan’s loneliness rings true
- ✓ Two gay dads written with depth
- ✓ Logan-Brandon arc is the standout
- ✓ Ashley and side cast read thinner
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Dread builds slowly and effectively
- ✓ “Creepy” is the recurring reader word
- ✓ Dual POV plays town from both sides
- ✓ PW flags distracting time jumps
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Grief and loneliness land hard
- ✓ Father-daughter rift carries real weight
- ✓ Town bigotry treated as the true threat
- ✓ Final act blunts the build-up
Heat Level ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ romance.io: glimpses and kisses
- ✓ Teen age range, kissing only
- ✓ Emotional bond over physical intimacy
- ✓ Content notes far heavier than heat
Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ True standalone, mystery resolved
- ✓ Some readers found it hopeful
- ✓ No sequel or cliffhanger
- ✓ Widely called rushed and underexplained
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ Seasonal October pick for many readers
- ✓ Nankani audiobook praised by AudioFile
- ✓ Family story rewards a second pass
- ✓ Predictable reveal limits the replay
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