Lights Out Review: It Held Me Hostage Until 1 am

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My eyes were burning. It was past 1 a.m. I had work in the morning and absolutely zero interest in putting Lights Out down.

That’s what I can tell you about my experience with Lights Out by Navessa Allen. It held me hostage for eight hours straight, audio through Everand (sign up and get 2 free unlocks) synced with my physical copy I had to have in my hands, and when I finally forced myself to stop, it was because my body gave out before the story did.

I loved it. I also have one very specific critique of it. Both things are completely true.

Title: Lights Out (Into Darkness, 1)

Author: Navessa Allen

Publisher: Slow Burn

Format: Immersive (physical and audiobook)

Genre: Dark Romance, Romantic Comedy, Romance

Release Date: October 14, 2025

Pages: 416

Star Rating: 4.5 stars

Spice Rating: 3 chili peppers

What Lights Out by Navessa Allen Gets Absolutely Right

Josh Hammond is the whole thing.

He’s the reason you’ll stay. The reason the hours disappear. The reason you’ll still be thinking about a fictional man’s online persona three days after you’ve finished the book and telling yourself that’s completely normal.

But here’s what I didn’t see coming: Aly Cappellucci matches him. Completely. She is a trauma nurse and a badass in the truest sense of the word. Not the kind books declare and then immediately undercut with helpless decision-making, but the kind that is competent and sharp and fully capable of handling herself and chooses Josh anyway. The banter between them is top tier. (It honestly reminds me of Butcher and Blackbird, and you can check out that review)

I laughed out loud. I swooned. Sometimes both in the same paragraph, which is a specific kind of reading experience I will chase for the rest of my life.

The premise earns every bit of that chemistry. Aly follows masked men online. Specifically one with millions of fans, heavy tattoos, and the kind of presence that makes a drunken text feel like a very reasonable decision. Josh Hammond has spent years keeping his real identity off the internet while secretly building his online persona. When Aly’s comment—begging him to break into her house while wearing the mask—hits his notifications, he doesn’t ignore it. He shows up.

What follows is a fast-paced, genuinely fun, genuinely tense dark romance that kept me up past 1 am and earns every star I’m giving it.

The pacing is one of the book’s quieter achievements. Nothing feels rushed. Nothing overstays its welcome. The tension builds the way good tension is supposed to. Not through withholding but through accumulation. Every scene adds something. I was connected to both characters for the entirety of those eight hours, which is rarer than it should be.

lights out photo by the diary of a reader.com

The One Critique I Can’t Let Go Of

Aly says she wants someone black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for her and not lose a single minute of sleep over it.

I clocked that line immediately. I spent the rest of the book waiting for Josh to be that.

He isn’t.

He throws up in the bushes after accidentally killing someone. He’s protective and attentive, and the kind of man who would absolutely feel terrible about what he does in pursuit of the woman he wants. That is not a flaw in Josh as a character; he works beautifully as written. It is a gap between what the book promises and what it actually delivers. (Or it could be that I’ve read too much dark romance at this point.🤷‍♀️)

This is diet dark romance. It has the architecture of dark—the masked man, the obsession, the breaking and entering, the online persona turned real-life stalker—but the execution is gentler than the label suggests. Josh reads more like a golden retriever than an apex predator.

*Please note that one of the tropes clearly says black cat x golden retriever, so it did not lie, but I want my dark romance apex predator, not fawning golden retriever*

His morality isn’t grey. It is warm, slightly golden, and completely intact, even when he’s doing things that should put it under pressure.

Which—again—is not a criticism of Josh. It is an observation about the gap between promise and delivery. Aly wanted someone black as night. What she got was someone who throws up in the bushes (endearing but we aren’t shooting for endearing). And the book doesn’t seem to notice the distance between two things.

If you come into Lights Out expecting true moral greyness—the kind that makes you uncomfortable, the kind that doesn’t apologize for itself—you may feel the same slight displacement I did. The darkness here is more about atmosphere than a character trait. It is a vibe, not a value system.

Which is why I gave the book 4.5 stars. Because it wasn’t enough to interrupt my pure enjoyment, but it was enough for me to say, “Hmm, that isn’t quite right.”

Why Josh Works Even When He Shouldn’t

The thing about a hero who doesn’t fully deliver on the darkness the book promises is that he can still be completely, devastingly effective. If the writing is good enough. Navessa Allen’s writing is good enough. More than good enough.

Josh works because he is specific. He isn’t a template of a dark romance hero installed into a premise. He has a personality that exists beyond his obsession with Aly, and it is genuinely compelling. The obsession feels like something that grew out of who he already was rather than something the plot handed him when the story needed it.

That specificity is what makes him the whole thing. You believe him. You believe he would do the things he does and feel exactly the way he feels about doing them. Even the throwing-up-in-the-bushes moment. Which should theoretically undercut the darkness entirely, works because it’s honest. It is what that character would do. And a character who is always exactly himself is a character worth following anywhere.

The online personal angle is also genuinely well executed. The gap between Josh’s public masked identity and his private self creates a tension that the romance earns rather than skips over. Aly fell for someone she thought she knew. Josh is that person and also not.

Navessa does something real with that dynamic in Lights Out.

lights out by navessa allen dark romance book taken by the diary of a reader

Read Lights Out If You Love/ Not For You If:

Read if you love:

Masked man and online to real life romance executed with actual craft
Heroes who are obsessed in specific, inconvenient, and entirely believable ways
Banter that earns the romance instead of substituting for it
An FMC who is capable, funny, and chooses the hero fully
The stalker romance trope without the emotional detachment
A book that will hold you past midnight and feel zero remorse about it.

Not for you if:

You need your dark romance actually dark. Morally grey without the safety net
The golden retriever hero in a dark premise is going to frustrate you
You’re triggered by stalking, breaking and entering, or CNC elements presented romantically
You came for black as night and will not accept golden retriever as a substitute

The Feeling It Left Behind

I finished this book at 1 am with burning eyes, a full chest, and one specific complaint I couldn’t shake. That combination shouldn’t work as well as it does.

The complaint is real. The diet gap between what was promised and what was delivered is real. And the full chest is everything else. The banter, the pacing, Josh and Aly, and eight hours of not wanting to be anywhere else.

A book that makes your eyes burn at 1 am and still doesn’t feel like enough- that’s doing something right. And you definitely need to add it to your TBR, so shop indie and buy it on Bookshop.org

If you want more honest book reviews like this one, find me on Instagram @diaryofthereader, sign up to my newsletter (and get a free Google Sheets reading tracker), or read more on Substack @thediaryofareader

For the ones who know that burning eyes at 1 am is not a complaint. It’s the highest compliment a book can earn. 🖤