{"id":6937,"date":"2026-02-20T06:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6937"},"modified":"2026-02-20T06:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:36:08","slug":"lilli-sutton-a-long-dark-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/lilli-sutton-a-long-dark-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Lilli Sutton: A Long Dark Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Long Dark Night<\/em>\u00a0is the second novel by Lilli Sutton, and it follows her debut stand alone that was of a similar mold – a harsh story of survival with themes of family, resilience, and ambition. Nina\u2019s story, however, is also a murder mystery. Coming home when the corona virus shuts down the world, Nina is estranged from her parents and siblings and has been running her own restaurant. Her family lives in isolated Whitespur, Alaska, and has limited access to any form of technology, especially cell service. Before, her mother wrote her letters, but Nina eventually stopped answering them. Her mother never acknowledged her success.<\/p>\n

Though Whitespur is small, freezing, and disconnected from the rest of the world in many ways, it has been spared the pandemic. Nina hopes to ride out the storm in her childhood home. She does not, however, find a family eager for her return. Her father, a renowned dogsled musher, has been injured and pretty much shut down. Her mother is gruff, and barely speaks to her or her younger brother Grant. Older sister Audrey moved out and became addicted to drugs and alcohol. Grant himself is working at the local oilfield.<\/p>\n

The oilfield is contentious to say the least. Though it provides much needed jobs and good pay, it is destroying the beautiful natural environment they all love. Nina never would have thought Grant would work for such a company, but she didn\u2019t know how dire things had gotten. With no tourists coming in, the dogsled tour business that has always kept her family afloat is no longer pulling in money. It left Nina\u2019s family with a lot of mouths to feed, and little way to do it without Grant\u2019s money. Though Nina is happy to reconnect with the dogs, and with some of her old friends, she\u2019s quickly bored and as isolated as Whitespur itself.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for her, things don\u2019t stay quiet for long. An explosion at the oilfield leaves Grant a witness to a death – and one that is swiftly and terrifyingly covered up by a supervisor at the site. The men who drive the body out into the wilderness with Grant threaten him into silence. He knows they will make good on these threats. And he suspects that the efficiency with which they disposed of the body means that this isn\u2019t their first time – especially given there are other missing men in the area. Grant tells Nina, who wants to tell the police. He won\u2019t relent and do it himself, too scared of the repercussions. But how long can Nina resist her morals and keep her brother\u2019s secret?<\/p>\n

A Long Dark Night\u00a0<\/em>is a slow build, but not at all in a bad way. Often, the book makes the reader feel like they\u2019re in snowy Whitespur themselves, fighting for survival alongside the characters. Nina, the main narrator but not the only one, feels lived in and very real. She left a full, interesting life before the pandemic and it’s fascinating to watch her readapt. This is a dark story, however. Nina\u2019s family are often unpleasant and stand offish, her sister\u2019s addiction isn\u2019t shied away from, and there are no clean-cut fixes to the family\u2019s problems. It is, however, a story worth reading for anyone choosing to brave it.\u00a0 —\u00a0Margaret Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Long Dark Night\u00a0is the second novel by Lilli Sutton, and it follows her debut stand alone that was of a similar mold – a harsh story of survival with themes of family, resilience, and ambition. Nina\u2019s story, however, is also a murder mystery. Coming home when the corona virus shuts down the world, Nina … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2424,473,2426,2425,81,2121],"class_list":["post-6937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-long-dark-night","tag-alaska","tag-coronavirus-pandemic","tag-lilli-sutton","tag-margaret-agnew","tag-park-row-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6939,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937\/revisions\/6939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}