Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I started this book on a flight and finished it the following day- I could NOT put it down!! This psychological thriller checked all the boxes for me: multiple POVs, likable/relatable MCs, and kept me guessing right up until the end. While I did guess who the killer was pretty early on, the story was so well done and so incredibly intricate that I didn’t mind the mild disappointment at having guessed the killer. For me, if I can’t put the book down, am constantly analyzing the story/potential endings, and was pleased by the ending (I.e. no loose ends or remaining questions), then it’s a 5/5 for me.

Be sure to pick this one up and add it to the top of your TBR!

Wow! This was my second Alex Finlay book and I think it was even better than "Every Last Fear!"

I just love the multiple POVs and timelines between the characters and murders. It made the book fast paced and kept me engaged the whole time.

I found the plotline very convoluted, but it was done in a very good way. It definitely made you think and kept you guessing throughout the book.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

This one was definitely a page turner.
The short chapters that often ended on a cliff hanger made me want to keep reading. It was hard to put this down because I had to know what happened next.

I liked all three narrators. They each had a distinct voice and story line. I liked how their stories were woven together and overlapped.

There were also quite a few twists in this that surprised me. I felt like every couple of chapters something new and shocking was revealed.

My only complaint is I felt the ending was a tad rushed. I wish the reveal was longer and better explained and that there was more follow up with the characters after everything.

Overall a quick and twisty thriller!

The twistiest of thrillers with rivetingly juicy reveals from character to character. The way the story weaves is masterful and sends the reader on a thrill ride.

t’s New Year’s Eve 1999 and the local Blockbuster Video shop in Linden, NJ is getting ready to close. Stevie, the young manager is trying to control his teenage employees, to no avail. As he walks into the breakroom, to summon them back to work, he’s stunned to see one of the girls on the floor - then he’s grabbed from behind and has his throat slit. Only one of the four teens working that fateful night will survive their injuries.

It’s now 2015 and Ella, a psychotherapist with problems of her own, receives a phone call from her old high school teacher, Mr. Steadman, asking her to come to the local hospital. There’s been another murder, this time an ice cream shop, its details eerily similar to the attack long ago, with another young girl inexplicably left alive. As Ella survived the attack all those years ago, Mr. Steadman is hopeful that she can connect with this newest victim, Jesse, over their shared trauma, because Jesse will not let anyone near her.

FBI Agent Sarah Keller, very pregnant with twins, is sent in to assist Linden PD with this newest murder case.  As Sarah arrives in Linden, her police liaison is a young, studious Detective named Atticus Singh. They have been tasked with reviewing the old Blockbuster case and the presumed perpetrator, Vincent Whittaker, who fled the area and has never been found.

Chris Ford, a young public defender with his own ghosts from the past, is just leaving a jailhouse visit with a client when he sees a headline scroll across his smartphone’s newsfeed about the murder. As he reads the unfolding story, his mind drifts back to the events around that fateful night in 1999, and the disappearance of his older brother – a brother he hopes to someday find.

Each of these characters - with seemingly separate backgrounds - take turns in telling their portions of the story, and will find their lives exquisitely intertwined as the story unfolds, as Ella tries to help a young woman through her trauma & Chris continues his search for the brother he lost so many years ago. Meanwhile Sarah & Atticus are painstakingly investigating past and present murders, linked by one common denominator – did the killer really leave town after the murders or has he been hiding in plain sight all this time?

I could NOT put this book down!! From the first page, I was completely hooked and am still reeling from the ending!  I loved these characters - their flaws, their tragedies, their resilience made for one hell of a story – and while I’d hoped for different outcomes for a character or two, the storylines we’re all expertly brought together in one hell of a story!  You most definitely need to take this one for a ride!

I received this book as an Advance Reader Copy from Netgalley & St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an objective review.  Do you love to read?? Visit www.netgalley.com and start reviewing books today!!

“Goodnight, pretty girl.” Who is whispering these four words to two surviving girls before he knocks them out and murders the three other girls they are with. One girl is found alive at the scene of the Blockbuster murders after her coworkers are murdered and many years later another girl is found alive at an ice cream store after her coworkers are murdered. Are they copycat murders or is the same person responsible for both murders? What if any is the is connection between the two murders?

The Night Shift is the second book I have read by Alex Finlay. If your looking to escape into a murder mystery it will keep your attention and make you forget your troubles. While I enjoyed the book I didn’t like it as much as Every Last Fear. For some reason I wasn’t able to really connect with the characters, I found the way the story was told, in short chapters, made the read very choppy and confusing. I found myself questioning which time frame and which group of people they were talking about. I found myself having to really think who everyone was and what their roles where in the story. That being said I would recommend it as a fast read that will hold your attention. Not the best but good enough that I would read another book by this author. Sometimes all you need is to jump into a mystery that helps you escape and pass the time!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Though this book started off at a clip, it somehow never quite hooked me. Maybe that was because I didn't connect with the characters, but ultimately, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Really liked this one!! I've noticed recently that it's been hard for me to find thrillers that I actually enjoy whether it's because it's too obvious or I just don't attach to the characters or whatever other reasons there might be but that was truly not the case with this one! I really liked all the characters in this book and felt they were fleshed out enough to root for (especially Keller, I loved her) which made the mystery and the action way more heightened for me. The last quarter of this book was easily the best part - the twists all got me and the action in the last few chapters was incredible (and devastating??) However, I don't think this book is perfect; I think it needed a little more time at the end to really tightly wrap up some loose ends and I would've loved to sit with these characters for a bit longer to really get to say goodbye to them. I also wish they had taken a little more time to go back over the plot to show how who did it had done it (like in those crime shows lol). Overall, it was really fun & a successful thriller for me!!!

Reading this book did give me nostalgia vibes regarding Blockbuster. I can remember visiting my local Blockbuster regularly to check out movies.

I really enjoyed this book. I started it in the morning and by the evening I had finished this book. This story is told from three main POVs...Ella is the sole survivor of the original murders, FBI Agent Keller, and Chris is the brother of Vince, who was believed to be the original killer.

I had no trouble with the multiple POVs. I wanted to point this out as sometimes this can get confusing. In this case, it was no problem and in fact, it brought me closer to each of the characters. It allowed me to get close to each of them on an emotional level.

The whole time I was reading this book, I kind of was interested in figuring out who the killer was before the reveal but at the same time I did not care if I did not figure it out early. The Night Shift will keep you up all night reading!

The Night Shift is an absolute page turner. If you enjoy mystery/thriller where you think you know what’s happening, grab this one because it’s definitely not what you’re expecting.

Wow! I absolutely Loved The Night Shift! Any book that starts in 1999 at a Blockbuster is definitely going to get my attention. I was 15 on NYE 1999 and boy was did thar initial few pages bring me back!

This isn’t my first by Alex Finlay but it solidified his status as an auto-buy author! I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. Fifteen years ago on NYE 4 people were murdered inside of a Blockbuster video. Only one person survived. Now a similar murder scene is found very close to the original scene with everyone dead but one survivor. Both survivors were teenage girls and the suspect from the original murder has been missing for 15 years. Agent Sarah Keller of the FBI is called in to assist the locals. Despite being 8 months pregnant with twins, her senses are sharp and she soon finds herself in the spotlight. Determined to solve the case before anyone else ends up dead, she soon finds herself face to face with a killer who has been hiding in plain sight.

I loved the final girls style plot, the nostalgia and the twists. The addition of the FBI procedural aspect definitely kept my rapt attention but the only way the pieces were tied up at the end is what made this a 5⭐️ read. Once i started I couldn’t put it down! Thank you @netgalley and @minotaurbooks for the E-Arc!

. . . ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭒
Both the synopsis and plentiful positive reviews on this one caught my attention, but I worried that it wouldn’t live up to the hype, but I must say that this exceeded my expectations.

This was an engaging, fast-paced, and entertaining read. The short chapters and alternative perspectives kept things interesting, and it managed to be the right amount of gruesome without being gratuitous.

Despite that I correctly guessed the “who” immediately after being introduced to the character ( I’m no fun to watch mystery/crime TV with ), this book still offered some solid unexpected and surprising twists - it’s hard to fully mislead the reader, and if you can’t fool them on the ultimate whodunit, you’ve got to be able to keep them guessing and interested enough to keep reading - so kudos to this author in doing so.

I was along for the ride on this one, and let me tell you, it’s worth the journey.

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, & Minotaur Books for a digital advanced readers copy.

~👩🏻‍🦰

New Years Eve 1999 - violent murder at a Blockbuster video, leaving several teenagers dead.
One survived - Ella, now a therapist.

15 years later - a very similar crime in the same town, this time at an ice cream store.
Again, one survived.

Now Ella is called to the hospital to talk to the victim. It is soon apparent to Ella that the details of the case are very similar and that they may be looking at a copycat killer, better yet the accused killer from the Blockbuster killings has been MIA for years, has he returned to his old stomping grounds?

This was a quick and engrossing read which is what I look for in a thriller. The storyline is suspenseful is a cross between a police (FBI) procedural and true crime/serial killer type story. I was interested in the storyline and did not guess the ending.

I think I read this in 3 days (through e-learning days and virtual parent-teacher conference nights) because it was so hard to put down!

There is just SO much going on in this story. There is never a dull moment and it’s extremely fast-paced! It is told from different points of view, and sometimes from the past.

The beginning was reminiscent of a Scream type horror flick (a murder massacre at a Blockbuster store) but then the secrets and details started pouring out and what really happened is just crazy!

It’s sad, it’s suspenseful (man, there were two scenes that had my heart pumping crazy fast), it’s heartbreaking, and it will make you angry! It has it all!! I figured out who the “bad guy” was but only a few pages before it is revealed. Some other things, I had NO idea were going to happen.

My only complaint was that it took me some time to keep all the characters straight (there are a lot of them). Once I had that figured out, it was all smooth sailing.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

A 5 star read from Alex Finlay. The Night Shift is a great thriller kept me hooked the entire time. Alternating POV between Ella, the lone survivor of a horrific crime 15 years ago, Chris, the brother of the accused killer, and Sarah Keller, the detective determined to solve the crimes, help tell the story. Alex Finlay keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, guessing at every twist and turn.
My first 5 star read of the year - HIGHLY recommend!!

Thank you to Minotaur Books and Alex Finlay for letting me read The Night Shift early. This one publishes on March 1!

I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick, easy and fast paced read full of likable characters and enough mystery to keep me guessing. I loved the alternating characters in chapters as well as the dual time periods. If you’re looking for a quick escape, The Night Shift should be added to your TBR.

New Year’s Eve 1999. Four teenagers are working the late shift at Blockbuster in New Jersey and they are fatally attacked. Only one survives and the police quickly identify a suspect. He flees and is never seen again. 15 years later some teenagers are attacked at an ice cream store and again only one makes it out alive. Three lives intersect, the lone survivor from Blockbuster, the brother of the missing fugitive, and the FBI agent looking into both crimes. Who will uncover the truth first?

I love the idea of this book and enjoyed reading it. I liked how you saw the case from different perspectives. Solid characters. I would have liked a little more action in the middle of the book however the ending blew me away.

Another let down this year for me ugh. I was so excited that this one sounded like a good 90s blockbuster nostalgia thriller but it was not that. Only a small tiny fraction of the book included flashback scenes to the murders that happened in the 90s. The rest of the book we flip between multiple different narratives 15 years later and it was just meh for me. A lot of times I found myself tuning out or not even remembering who some of the characters were because they didn’t have enough depth to them. Overall this was just an okay average thriller that I will forget what even happened 2 days from now.

Thank you NetGalley and the published for sending me this ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

This mystery/thriller opens on New Year's Eve 1999 in a Blockbuster Video store in New Jersey. The four teens working there are attacked, only one survives, and the police's only suspect disappears. Fifteen years later, there's an attack on an ice cream store and, again, only one teen makes it out alive. FBI agent Sarah Keller is invited in to investigate if the current attack was done by the same person and if that means the fugitive murder suspect is back in town. We also follow the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre and the younger brother of the accused killer as they both are driven to find out the truth of what happened that night.

TW/CW: adult/minor relationship, infidelity, domestic violence, pregnancy

Finlay broke out in 2021 with his thriller Every Last Fear and the similarities between that book and this one are hard to ignore. Besides following the same FBI Agent Sarah Keller, there are a lot of the same tropes and character types but I think they are used much more effectively in this book than in Every Last Fear. I don't mind at all when authors re-use tropes in multiple books but I do think it makes it really easy to compare/contrast the two works. In this case, I was glad to see that Finlay re-balanced some of the other elements in the story which gives the two books a completely different feel even if they have a lot of the same plot elements. I'll go into detail in the later points, but basically this book gave me more of the elements I wanted out of Every Last Fear (such as heavier on the FBI investigation and more balanced multi-POV choices) and got rid of the, in my opinion, weaker elements. [my review of Every Last Fear is linked here]

I was so happy to see Agent Keller back in this book. I'm not sure if Finlay is planning on making this a series following the FBI agent but she was my favorite character in Every Last Fear so I was excited to see her return. Another review I read made a comment that they're happy to see a female FBI agent without a super tragic or angsty backstory and as much as I like my haggard and damaged detectives, it was really nice have the focus be more on the mystery. She's 8 months pregnant at the beginning of the book and every time it was mentioned, the movie Fargo kept popping up in my head. I think the part I liked the most about Agent Keller's character is that she is so steadfast and good at her job that she acts as almost a safe point for the reader. The investigation and other POVs are a little chaotic but when we come back to Agent Keller's POV it almost acts as a bit of a resting point in the story while we're driving with her to interview a witness/suspect/whoever. I think she acts as a great outsider perspective for these two crimes in this small town where it seems everyone is connected in one way or another.

I really enjoyed the POV choices in this book and found them equally interesting. I love a good multi-POV book but only if each of the plot lines have something interesting about them (which was one of my main issues with Every Last Fear). In this case, it was clear that each of the POV characters had a connection to the current investigation (and thus would become important to the main mystery thread at some point) but they also had their own interesting, personal journeys. There were a couple times when one POV would end on a bit of cliffhanger or juicy tidbit of information and I wanted to find out what happened next but then the next chapter would be a new POV. This is a pretty common tactic with any book but I think when it comes to multi-POV books it can be really obvious and some readers might not like it very much at all. Initially, the three main POV characters and their plot lines are very separate but as the investigation ramps up they do entwine. I really enjoy once they start crossing over because it lets us see these other characters from a new perspective. I also liked how we are mostly set in the current day investigation with the occasional flashback scene to 1999. I think it worked really well because none of our present day characters know what happened back in 1999 (which is sort of the whole point of the plot) and as much as I love a good dual-timeline, I don't think it would have worked well in this case.

The one complaint (but it really isn't an actual complaint) is how bittersweet the ending is. We get two big reveals in the last 10% of the book that just made me so sad but then I found the epilogue to be so uplifting. The fact that Finlay made me cry - twice! - in what is, essentially, a police procedural I think really says a lot about how immersive his writing and characters are. It is the type of ending for a mystery where you keep flipping pages and think to yourself "no, no, no, that can't be real" and you're hoping for another twist to the twist but it never comes. In regards to the plot-side of the ending, I think Finlay does a really great job of layering on the information and reveals so they build on each other and raise the tension even more. The actual reveal, for me, wasn't anything off the wall but it was really well built up and I personally didn't guess any of the details about the ending correctly.

I really enjoy Finlay's writing style and how immersive and page-turning it is. He has a very readable style that works so well with his more commercially high-concept plots. There aren't many seams in the writing so once I was immersed, I was in all the way. I know writing styles are very subjective and each reader will have their own preferences. The best way I can describe it is that the style is invisible when I'm reading. I don't get tripped up over sentence structure or word choice. There aren't long paragraphs of description or meandering philosophical thoughts. And there isn't anything wrong with styles that do include those - I like a good flowery prose every now and then. I also know and fully acknowledge the fact that it takes a lot of work for the writing to become 'invisible'. But I think for a commercial mystery/thriller like this, the less complicated prose makes it so compulsively easy to read. The kind of writing that makes you go 'just one more chapter' over and over again.

Overall, this was pretty much my perfect high-concept commercial mystery/thriller. I got more of everything I wanted from Finlay's first book and it all worked really well for me. I don't think the actual plot is anything extraordinarily new and exciting but the investigation, characters, and writing style all came together really well to make this a very immersive read.

Thanks NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is March 1, 2022

The Night Shift has everything that I'm looking for in a mystery and it was so hard to put down. I loved the alternating character views and I was so curious on how the 2 events were going to be connected.

Thank you to Netgallery and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.