Briardark by S. A. Harian || Creepy Thriller Filled With Plot Twists

Briardark (Briardark, #1)

Survival and cosmic horror collide in this new series, perfect for fans of LOST and House of Leaves.

For Dr. Siena Dupont and her ambitious team, the Alpenglow glacier expedition is a career-defining opportunity. But thirty miles into the desolate Deadswitch Wilderness, they discover a missing hiker dangling from a tree, and their satellite phone fails to call out.

Then the body vanishes without a trace.

The disappearance isn’t the only chilling anomaly. Siena’s map no longer aligns with the trail. The glacier they were supposed to study has inexplicably melted. Strange foliage overruns the mountainside, and a tunnel within a tree hollow lures Siena to a hidden cabin, and a stranger with a sinister message…

Holden Sharpe’s IT job offers little distraction from his wasted potential until he stumbles upon a decommissioned hard drive and an old audio file. Trapped on a mountain, Dr. Siena Dupont recounts an expedition in chaos and the bloody death of a colleague.

Entranced by the mystery, Holden searches for answers to Siena’s fate. But he is unprepared for the truth that will draw him to the outskirts of Deadswitch Wilderness—a place teeming with unfathomable nightmares and impossibilities.

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Perfect for readers who want:

• Claustrophobic, creepy atmosphere with an overwhelming feeling of wrongness.
• Spooky woods!
• Plot twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
• Characters with plenty of personal baggage complicating things.
• Eldritch horrors.

Many thanks to Compass and Fern for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Quotes taken from an unfinished product and may differ from the final version.

I don’t read a ton of horror, but when a good, spooky horror rears its head, I find it really hard to resist. That’s definitely the case for Briardark. If that cover isn’t enough to convince you this is going to be a spine-tingling romp, that blurb will definitely do it for you. Growing up in the Adirondacks, I’m a sucker for anything that involves creepy woods/forests, so I knew I had to check this one out!

Briardark is horror at its purest, with something ominous lurking just around the corner, things not quite as they seem, plot twists, strange occurrences, and a mystery centuries in the making.

This book is comped to Lost, which is a show that I absolutely loved but didn’t often understand. I feel like that’s a pretty fair comparison for this book. The atmosphere is top-notch, the creeping sense of dread, the feeling of wrongness. It’s all so well done. However, I would caution readers to not expect to necessarily understand what the heck is happening. I hope the next book will clear things up, but I was so confused at the end of this book!

This world is dark and not for the feint of heart. Be forewarned. You’ll find no heroes here.

I’m not saying everyone in this world is necessarily evil, because they’re not. They’re just . . . humans. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but humans are kind of messy balls of chaos and emotion. Everyone has some sort of secret they’re hiding from the rest. It’s just that some secrets are more deadly than others.

If you weren’t keyed in by the fact that this book is, in fact, in the horror genre, let me assure you that plenty of dark things take place. No one enters (or leaves) the Briardark unscathed. No one can be trusted. Not your friends. Not the people you thought you knew. Can’t even trust your mind, sometimes, because the woods can play tricks on you.

Briardark will definitely appeal to readers who like a little bit of dark worlds and eldritch horrors. If you’re looking to appreciate how wonderful our messed up world is, Briardark can definitely accomplish that!

There’s something . . . off . . . about the Deadswitch Wilderness, as Siena and her team are about to learn the hard way.

This was by far my favorite part of the book! Harian does such a fantastic job of creating this foreboding atmosphere that develops this sinking dread that something’s wrong. Even if you’re not quite sure yet what it is. Things just aren’t adding up, and you can’t put your finger on it. Let’s be honest, woods are creepy to start with. I don’t care if you love them, you spend lots of time in them, anyone who knows anything will know that woods can be creepy. It’s one of the reasons I love horror books set in forests. There’s just so much unknown that could be lurking in the trees. Harian really capitalizes on this feeling!

As much as she tries to deny it, Siena knows something’s up. Partly because they aren’t the first research group to trek to Alpenglow to study the glacier in Deadswitch Wilderness. In fact, her professor, who she looked up to, knew something about Deadswitch that he wasn’t exactly forthright with. All Siena knows for sure is that his last words to her were, “Don’t go.” If only she’d listened to him.

The story is told from two perspectives: one from Siena and her team as they mount an expedition to the Alpenglow glacier, and one from Holden, who finds a strange recording from a team of scientists exploring the Alpenglow glacier.

I’m not always a fan of dual timelines/perspectives like this, especially when Holden’s slows down the story so much, but Harian really makes it work here! It’s so well done, in fact, that I find there’s not a whole ton I can say about Holden and his role in the story because a lot of it is going to be a spoiler. And trust me, you need to discover it yourself while reading.

What I can say is that Holden’s perspective is a breath of fresh air. He’s not a scientist, and he has no real interest in Alpenglow or the Deadswitch Wilderness. In fact, he’s dragged into the whole thing purely by accident. He’s surly and sarcastic and teams up with the most unlikely person in his mind, but his connection to Siena’s expedition is undeniable. Even if he doesn’t fully understand it himself.

Despite the story being extremely dark, Harian balances the atmosphere with a host of characters who are relatable and delightfully sarcastic.

I feel it should come as no surprise that my favorite character is Zaid, the scientist who’s a teensy bit too in love with his job and sometimes (oftentimes?) takes unconventional and ill-advised approaches to it. In the best way, of course.

While I didn’t necessarily immediately love all the characters, they were all relatable to some extent. There are a lot of characters in this, and it can be hard to keep them straight at times, but as I got to know them better, it became a lot easier. I won’t say I was necessarily invested in most of their stories, but I was curious about them, at least. I definitely want to know how their stories end!

The plot feels a little too ambitious in that it’s so twisty and mysterious and confusing that even by the end, I have no idea what the heck happened in the last 25%-ish of the book or what’s going on.

Individual events, sure, I get, but overall? I just . . . have no idea. I don’t understand what the Briardark is and what’s going on inside it. Obviously, there are answers to come in the following book, and I get that. However, this one didn’t feel quite complete. It was a little too surreal and hard to follow and stretched my disbelief to the point of just about snapping. That being said, I am super freaking curious to find out how this duology ends, so I’m obviously going to be picking up the next book.

About S.A. Harian

S.A. Harian grew up near Yosemite and now lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and dog. She’s been writing since she was eight, around the time she became obsessed with Nancy Drew. Now she writes stories that are much scarier.

While she loves reading, most of her inspiration comes from video games. You can find her survival and horror gameplays on YouTube.

Sometimes, she even hikes, which in her opinion is very, very brave.

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