I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Little Brown Books for Young Readers through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

The creativity expressed by Adam Borba in a difficult situation lived through by Carl Chesterfield struggling through life and finding out about a secret club called the Midnight Brigade showing a total act of desperation to be one of their elite members. The storyline of this book is similar to Fight Club where you imagine a society being something else in your mind but, it's totally different than expected and in the words of Edward Norton...THIS IS TOO MUCH! Written however for the middle grade-YA audience, Adam Borba did a marvelous job with the sentence structure, vocabulary use, and plot creation keeping my eyes glued to the page fighting the urge of desire to anxiously anticipate how this will end. The only way to fight the urge is to keep reading until you're done. I finished the book in four hours and loved every hour, minute, and second of this book. This book will also be a great nominee for next year's Battle of the Books competition.

A great title for any day, anytime of the week when you're in need of a getaway from the struggles of reality. This book deserves 5 stars.

This was a fun tour of Pittsburgh and its bridges. I really enjoyed the relationship of Carl with his family and friends although I do hope he finally has a decent haircut.

So many of today’s stories for kids feature kids who are extraordinary—kids who are popular or world-famous or have some kind of mind-blowing powers. But that’s not the case in The Midnight Brigade by author Adam Borba. Its trio of characters is lovably, refreshingly average.

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery - 10/5/21

Carl loves bridges. His dad has been a bridge engineer and taught Carl so much about them. When Carl starts noticing scratches on the bridges and-did that one move?-he starts to get worried. At school, Carl finds a poster for The Midnight Brigade and decides to join. Together, he and the other two members discover where those strange scratches came from, and it's not at all what they expected!

My fourth and fifth graders are going to love this title! I'm so excited to share it with them!