#BookReview: Shaken To The Core by Dara Levan

Read The Title Of This Book. You Have Been Warned. Seriously, this is one of those books that starts off pretty damned dark - in the days after a woman's mom dies - and doesn't really get any brighter. Indeed, in a lot of ways it gets even darker. Never *illegal* levels of dark, but among the darker aspects of life that unfortunately all too many of us will go through in various ways at various times.

As at least a more modern "vaccine" that won't actually stop anything but *may* prepare you for *some* aspects of the thing... this book actually works quite well to explore the things it does in a "safe" fictional world and allow the reader to experience those things in this setting, in the chance that the reader does experience similar things themselves later.

For those *looking* for heavy or perhaps those that are currently/ recently in similar events as described here, this book may well be quite cathartic indeed. Maybe you don't make the same choices our lead does here, maybe in at least some of them you do. But the tale itself may truly allow you to work through your own version of these emotions, and for that reason alone it may genuinely be helpful. Though I doubt many of us - myself included! - would be able to do at least some of the things that happen here.

One aspect I particularly enjoyed - though at least some readers will likely want to defenestrate the book over, for varying reasons - is its actual celebration of and joy in marital "spice". This isn't some romance "everyone is Matt Cardona - Alwayz Ready", but neither is it a more Puritan "how did these people ever procreate at all". Instead, this is two people who are clearly still very much into each other even after so many years together and even as so much is happening elsewhere in their lives. Few books ever get this balance quite so well as this book did, and it was genuinely refreshing to see here.

One aspect that was a minor annoyance at least for me is that there was a Chekov's gun... with no payoff. One particular thing gets hinted at and as Pepper Potts said in The Avengers "not that subtle" either... and yet the tale ends with absolutely zero mention of anything that happened with that element. Given the rest of the story, maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. But dammit, this is my review and that was my experience with the book - wanting *some* version of paying off that particular literary device, even if just a sentence or two, and again, this particular thing may or may not even actually be noticed by most readers. It will be interesting to see the other reviews over the years to see if anyone else picks up on it/ feels as I did about it.

Overall though, while this is *far* from a "cheery, sunny" beach read kind of book, it is exactly the kind of heavy yet potentially cathartic book other readers may want/ need, and it is quite a strong book of its form to boot.

Very much recommended.

This review of Shaken To The Core by Dara Levan was originally written on June 25, 2026.