Darkness Greeted Her

Christina Ferko

Book cover for Darkness Greeted Her
Image for variant 9781464236310
Book cover for Darkness Greeted Her
Image for variant 9781464236310

Darkness Greeted Her

Darkness Greeted Her

Christina Ferko

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Description

Yellowjackets meets Smile in this atmospheric sapphic horror debut, in which a group of troubled girls are stalked through the Appalachian wilderness by a frightening monster that feeds on their deepest fears.

Penny's abusive father is dead...but she still hears his voice in her head, encouraging her to hurt those around her. She can't go to school or be around her friends or even draw with a sharp pencil without her intrusive thoughts urging her toward violence. Desperate to get a handle on her OCD, she agrees to spend the summer at Camp Whitewood--an exclusive therapy retreat in the woods.

She feels optimistic when she arrives. The other girls all have their reasons for being there, which makes Penny feel a little less alone. But then she starts seeing things that can't possibly be there: the gold watch her father was buried with, his favorite whiskey spilled on her cabin floor...a terrifying figure she calls the Shadow Man looming at the foot of her bed. Penny thinks she is losing her mind, but when a girl goes missing, and is later found dead, it's clear that whatever is happening at Camp Whitewood isn't all in her head.

As the hallucinations become increasingly intense and more girls wind up dead, Penny must work with whoever is left standing to figure out what is real before the Shadow Man uses their traumas against them and claims their lives.

Critical Reviews

"Eerie, unsettling... [and] chilling." -- School Library Journal

"The Darkness Greeted Her is a perfect Gothic horror, where trauma has a physical form and it's hunting girls. Rich with queer and mental health rep, Ferko's love letter to survivors is beautifully written from start to finish, and I can't recommend it enough!" -- Jamison Shea, author of I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me

"Surreal... Hand to fans of Courtney Gould's What the Woods Took." -- Booklist

Publishing Information

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Pub date: 2026-02-03
Length: 416 pages

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