Midnight Is The Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead.
Book Synopsis
From the critically acclaimed author of In My Dreams I Hold A Knife and The Last Housewife comes a gothic Southern thriller about a killer haunting a small Louisiana town, where two outcasts—the preacher's daughter and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks—hold the key to uncovering the truth.
For fans of Verity and A Flicker in the Dark, this is a twisted tale of murder, obsessive love, and the beastly urges that lie dormant within us all...even the God-fearing folk of Bottom Springs, Louisiana. In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist.
Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners' bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar—and Ruth realizes only she and Everett, an old friend with a dark past, have the power to comb the town's secret underbelly in search of true evil.
A dark and powerful novel like fans have come to expect from Ashley Winstead, Midnight is the Darkest Hour is an examination of the ways we've come to expect love, religion, and stories to save us, the lengths we have to go to in order to take back power, and the monstrous work of being a girl in this world.
My Thoughts
Midnight Is The Darkest Hour is a very atmospheric read that relies heavily on the setting which almost is as much a character in this book as are the narrators. This book is a southern gothic mystery with elements of romance and a creepy small town setting. The book alternates back and forth in time between when Ruth and Everett were younger and when they are older.
There was a small section of the book that didn't hold my interest as much as the rest around the middle or second half of the book, but it was short-lived and then I was back to the interesting writing again.
The author chose to write the novel in a different format than the typical then and now alternate time periods, instead we read several chapters of the past and then several chapters of the now time period. It was interesting that the author chose this writing style and I feel the writing still flowed smoothly and didn't affect how easily I got swept up in this page-turning novel. This felt very different from In My Dreams I Hold A Knife by this author and I didn’t want to stop reading. I definitely look forward to reading other books by this author including her rom-com genre books.
My Rating: 4.5/5
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Book Details
Author: Ashley Winstead
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
Genre: Thriller. Suspense. Mystery. Horror. Mystery/Thriller. Romance. Fiction. Adult.
Edition: Paperback.
Pages: 400.
Nice Review!