Breaking the Dark
A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel
Super Hero Science Fiction
Hyperion
July 2, 2024
Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.
The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect.”
Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins’ new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?
A mother’s intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect—not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.
Breaking the Dark, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series, introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, and will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura. Marvel Crime novels build on one another but do not require in-depth familiarity with Marvel or the other books in the series.
I may be a Marvel fan myself; however, anyone who enjoys a supernatural mystery will enjoy this book. Jessica Jones, a former superhero in the Marvel universe, is a private detective investigating a cult-like disease that spreads across continents. She is hired to uncover why two upper class teenagers in New York are suddenly behaving like robots with bizarre “AI” qualities. Jessica’s Marvel backstory is sprinkled throughout “Breaking the Dark” and ties in nicely with the main plot.
Teenagers are a natural target for selling “perfection”.
One of the strange behaviors of the teenagers is their constant use of the word perfect. Everything they feel is perfect, their mood is perfect, the atmosphere is perfect, and their skin is literally perfect. Their faces appear to be practically airbrushed like they’re wearing a snapchat filter. Clearly, that seems to be impossible, which is why Jessica ends up in a small England town to investigate what happened to them while spending the summer with their father.
Throughout the book, we are transported between present time, and another timeline in the past of another family. The other family’s backstory is very mysterious at first, but soon we come to realize what makes them so sinister and how it affects people in the present time. A young woman from a small town with A LOT of ambition, and little morals, goes very far into bad behaviors. No one in her family is innocent, but she is definitely a young ring leader taking it all way too far. Only, she didn’t expect Jessica Jones to catch onto her secrets.
Breaking the Dark is a wild story line full of some crazy events that may be fiction, but feel too close to reality.
If the technology, physics, and supernatural elements in this story were real, I could see our society falling prey to this very plot. Readers do not need to know the Marvel universe to enjoy this book.
Kristin lives in the PNW with her husband, and three kids. She loves to read YA fiction, fantasy, and romance. She enjoys a few side-hustles, including creating bookreels/booktoks for authors. The only shows she watches are re-runs, and if she’s not reading a book, she’s listening to one.
