I received a free copy of The Hungering Dark: Awakening from BookLook Bloggers in order to write my honest review.

The darkness feels alive one evening as Rat is helping his sister finish up the dinner dishes. It’s creepy. The next day his father goes to do some work for an elderly couple living nearby. What happens there leads to the mystery of a puzzle box and the power inside it.

This story began with suspense and had me wondering and guessing at what was going on. Stephen R. Clark created some very interesting characters whose lives I quickly became interested in. The suspense and action held my interest and the mystery of the puzzle box and the power it contained was quite intriguing. The characters who came to town to help figure out the mystery or to try to get their hands on the box were an interesting bunch and it was sometimes hard to figure out which were the good guys and which could be the bad guys.

Sadly, in the final third of the book, the mystery sadly diminished as the author began to tell the reader everything instead of continuing to lay clues to the end. There was no more suspense or any piquing of my curiosity in the final third of the story. Even the action seemed slower and the danger was much less intense. The author no longer wrote any buildup to the big finale.

I enjoyed the book but was disappointed in the ending. I like a story like this to keep me guessing right to the end and that didn’t happen in The Hungering Dark: Awakening.