Okay. I need to talk about Lights Out because I finished it, and I have been thinking about Josh and Aly ever since, in a way that is probably not entirely healthy, but here we are.

If you haven't read this one yet, Lights Out follows Aly, a trauma nurse who has a very specific, very private fascination with masked men online. Then one night, one of those masked men breaks into her house. What follows is dark, tense, occasionally unhinged, and somehow also laugh-out-loud funny, which should not work as well as it does, but it absolutely does.

The Banter Is Unreal

I was not prepared for how funny this book is. Dark romance usually leans hard into brooding intensity, and Lights Out has that in spades, but the banter between Josh and Aly cuts through it constantly, in the best way. It's the kind of dialogue that makes you laugh out loud in a room by yourself and then immediately feel a little unhinged for laughing, given everything else happening on the page. That balance, terrifying one moment, hilarious the next, is genuinely hard to pull off, and Allen makes it look easy.

The Tension Never Lets Up

This is a dark romance in the fullest sense, and the tension between danger and desire is relentless in the best possible way. You know exactly what kind of story you're in from page one: a masked stalker, a woman who's more drawn to that than she should be, and every scene between them crackles with the push and pull of it. It's the kind of read where you tell yourself "just one more chapter" and then look up and it's 2 a.m.

Josh and Aly, Together

What really got to me was the dynamic between them. Josh is dangerous in every way the genre promises, but there's a specificity to how he sees Aly, and to how she refuses to be afraid of him as she's supposed to be, that makes their chemistry feel earned rather than just tropey. Their scenes together are the whole engine of the book. I was rooting for them, in a way I probably shouldn't admit to: a masked home intruder, and yet.

Why I'm Not Rushing Into Book Two Yet

I know, I know, Caught Up is right there. But Lights Out was so good that I'm actually holding off on picking it up for a bit. Some books you want to devour immediately. This one felt more like a really good cookie; you don't want to just inhale it and move on to the next thing; you want to let yourself sit with it a little first. I'll get caught up. Just not yet.

If you're looking for a dark romance that's genuinely funny, genuinely tense, and impossible to put down, Lights Out earns every bit of its hype. Highly enthusiastically recommend.