Lights Out by Louise Swanson

From Goodreads

A state of emergency has been declared in the UK.

From now on, at 8pm every night, all electricity cuts out.

The Government promises it's a temporary measure. They promise they are always thinking of your safety.

But for Grace, the darkness is anything but safe. Someone is coming into her house under its cover every night while she lies in bed upstairs, too terrified to sleep. Someone who knows her past, who knows why she has more reason to fear the dark than most...

And every morning she wakes to a new message.

I have you in my sights, Love, The Night.

But how can Grace escape, when there's nowhere safe left to hide?

My thoughts

My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for a copy of this in exchange of an honest review.

This book was beginning to burn a hole in my TBR (To Be Read) mountain.  I am a sucker for books by this Author, there I have admitted it.  She is my addiction, I just have to read what she writes as I find her writing so compelling and she knows how to draw the reader into the world that she has created among the pages.

Grace is living in the UK, the Government have declared a state of Emergency and between certain hours of the day all electricity is cut in order to preserve the supply.  From now on after 8pm at night the electricity is to be cut.  Promises have been made that this is a temporary measure, but can the Government be trusted as they're very good at making promises, BUT not keeping to them!

Grace is convinced that someone has been coming in to her house, during the dark hours as she id waking up to messages that have been left.  Who is leaving the messages and what do they know about her past?  As some of the messages have been cryptic in there content.

Lights Out is definitely a book set in the dystopian genre, but the World that we are currently living in compared to when some of us were younger, could quite easily be called a dystopian world.  With lockdowns and pandemics having been the norm for us for the last few years, we could all see how easily we could slip into a world where it's Lights Out at a certain time for whatever reason we are told by those that must be obeyed.

This was a claustrophobic read in many ways, as it plays on the claustrophobia that the dark can cause on people that are afraid of it.  Whilst I don't have any fears of the dark, I must admit that I do like to have the  doors locked when it's dark as you can't see who is out there.

The characters were well developed, the storyline had me gripped from start to finish as I tried to process what was happening and what may have struck some fear into Grace after having read the notes.

This would make a great reading group read, with there being many things that a group could discuss.