Face the Night begins with Adriana who has been haunted by the same nightmare since she was a child, she is in a lake, in the dark murky water as a rotting arm threatens to drag her down. She is in the house her dad rents to her and her young toddler. Eric her dead beat partner has returned to help her keep her son from being taken away by her father, the mayor. By a stroke of luck, the court gives her 30 days to get a job and her act together or they will take her son from her.

Adriana gets a job as a sketch artist at the local police station just what she needs to satisfy the court in terms of her custody battle but as her nightmares become more intense and take over her ability to focus she begins to lose control as her dreams and fears get the better of her. Adriana begins to see the face of her nightmares everywhere and believes there is something from her past that she has witnessed now coming to light. Forces are against her figuring out the truth, but is Adriana strong enough to tell what she saw as a little girl.

This was a fast read and not my usual genre, but I liked it. It was a slow start, then turned into a faced paced roar as the truth is revealed.

Face the Night by Alan Lastufka is a supernatural mystery novel.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Shortwave Media and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


My Synopsis:   (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)
Addie has been raising her son Dylan on her own, but her father, the Mayor of Cellar Ohio is trying to taken him from her.  Even when Dylan's biological father tries to step up, the judge disregards him.  Addie is given 30 days to get a full-time job.

She is somewhat successful in attaining a job with the police department as a sketch artist, using her skills as a tattoo artist as background. 

Unfortunately, Addie has been having nightmares for years, and suddenly, the only face she can draw, is the one from her nightmares.   He even seems to be attacking her during the day.  If she can't solve this problem, she will lose her job, and thereby lose custody of her son.


My Opinions:   
This was good, just not great.  I may be in the minority here.  I enjoyed it, but it also annoyed me.  The writing was okay, and the plot interesting, but it was missing something.

Some of the elements were a little much.  Addie's behaviour toward child rearing and job-finding left a lot to be desired, as did her decision to bring her child's deadbeat drug and alcohol addicted father into the picture to try to win custody of her child.  So it was difficult to truly like her.  Her father was over-the-top.  I really liked Hinkley.  I think an explanation as to why Addie could see ghosts would have been nice....yet others could see and feel him too, so, maybe not.

Anyway, I will be watching for this author's next novel.

Face The Night by Alan Lastufka attracted me simply by its cover image. There was something eerie about an open hand waiting inside a body of water that lured me in and the blurb did sound exciting. But after reading the book, I’m in a kind of dilemma about the review of the story.

Ask me, if I liked it, my answer would be YES, and then ask me, if I enjoyed it, my answer would be NO. So that is me completely bewildered at a fence with this book that had all the elements which I devour in a horror novel but failed to grip me in any way.

The small town ghostly mystery with a psychic heroine and a romantic element should have been a heavenly read, I am honestly a sucker for this trope but somehow or the other Face The Night didn’t live up to my expectation. Adriana has been suffering from the same nightmare for many years, she has never understood her ability of premonitions or ghostly visits which has made her life difficult. The cauldron however boils over having to fight a custody battle for her 3-year-old son against her own father and the desperate situation of having to gain a job to secure their future. The small-town politics and a father who is a mayor having the major players in his pocket have not benefitted Addie in any way so it was an uphill battle even before the fight begins. I loved Matt as the rookie cop aiming to be a detective who falls for the quirky artist and the secondary characters of Lisa and Jennifer who help Addie at times of crisis.

It would have been interesting if at all the twisty reveals packed a punch. The twists and turns in the story should have been thrilling with the apparition intruding into Addie’s life at every given opportunity but the adrenaline rush never materializes. For first-time readers of this genre, this is a book that has everything and more going for it but for someone like me who has read many a book in this category, this is a 3.5 star read.

This is a debut work by the author and I would be happy to read more works by Alan Lastufka.

Many thanks to Net Galley, Short Wave Media, IBPA, and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.com/, Goodreads, Amazon India, Book Bub, Medium.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

This book was not exactly what I was expecting. It was kind of all over the place, like it wasn't sure what it wanted to be. There was a ghostish plotline, a political plotline, and a police action plotline. I found it hard to focus on what was happened because it jumped around so between these plotlines so much. I was expecting it to more of a thriller type book, but I wouldn't really consider it a thriller as it wasn't very fast-paced. It also didn't seem like the tension was building too much, (not until the very end) mostly because it jumped from one plotline to another. People who like political fiction might enjoy this more than I did.

When I first thought about reading this book, the one thing I wanted was an amazing female protagonist, strong willed and brilliant. What I got was a bit of a cliché of a single mother. This made the book detached and kind of all over the place. I understand it is supposed to be 'horror' but I think this book would be better suited to the 'thriller' and 'science fiction' category because it definitely does not have the chill of a horror novel, nor does it have the character of realism in order to make it believable. It was definitely a good read, it was just a cliché most of the time.

2/5 rounded up to 3

Adriana is a single mother of a young boy who's deadbeat dad never showed any interest. She has always struggled to find a job in her small town, and the only reason she wasn't homeless is because her father, the Mayor let's her live in his house for low rent. However this comes at great cost. Her father is trying to take her son away from her, even taking her to court for custody, labelling her an unfit mother. She has to find a job and fast, to satisfy the courts that she is a capable mother. By chance Adriana finds a job at the police station which triggers her nightmares in waking life, which so far have only invaded her dreams. What unfolds is a story about small town politics, corruption, murder and supernatural horror.

More mystery/thriller with horror elements, I thought it was a well written story. As a horror fan I would have appreciated more supernatural horror, the author could have certainly ramped up the scare factor here but it was still a good story. The romance between Matt and Adriana was sweet. Good range of characters, I especially liked the deaf character Jennifer, and although I liked Adriana, I found her too wimpy at times when she kept screaming.

That said this book was a page turner for me as I finished it within two days and very much enjoyed it. I would recommend this book to anyone and would be interested in reading more from this author in the future.

For the most part, I enjoyed Face The Night, a novel about a young mom Adriana who is trying to do right by her son but is plagued by haunting nightmares. For me, the first half of the book was entertaining, scary, and a page turner. Around half, it was easy to tell how the mystery was going to unfold. It was good - I just wish there was more explanation to Adriana’s nightmares and her connections to the drawing, the paranormal side of it, and such. Good for a quick mystery read!

I tried so hard to push through this book. I felt that it had so much potential but I wasn't able to push myself further :( I am one of those people that truly hates having to DNF a book. But Face the Night just wasn't the book for me. I felt that it focused far more on icky small town politics (which is pretty horrific in itself), instead of actual horror. I made it to about 40% and had to call it quits. I'm sure that others out there will truly love this book more though! I think that others should still give it a go and see how they like it for themselves :)

Small town secrets. A decades-old cold case. Murder and mystery.

A young woman fighting for her life, her family, and her sanity, with a link to the supernatural world that puts all those things in jeopardy..

This book is more mystery than horror, a story where the ghost is seeking justice but the people are the true monsters. Addie is a young single mother, daughter of the town mayor. But the mayor has a lifetime full of dark secrets, and his daughter has a lifetime of nightmares and suppressed memories. Who is the gruesome specter that haunts her dreams and shows up in her art? And why is he in her head?

With the help of a rookie cop, Addie faces down all kinds of dangers, both supernatural and human, in her quest to reclaim her memories, face her demons, and prove to the world just how big a monster her father really is.
I liked this story, I liked Addie, though sometimes I had to shake my head at some of her decisions, but she's young and naive so I guess we can excuse her. The supernatural aspects, though really a small part of the story, were creepy and the scenes well-written. The small-town politicking is the most disturbing part of the whole story, and the lengths people will go to in order to climb the ladder of success are truly frightening.

I'd recommend this for readers who want a bit of lighter horror and who enjoy a good mystery and vengeance story.

Many thanks to Shortwave Media and NetGalley for the chance to read this one.

I very much enjoyed this book, far more than I was expecting to.

It's a tale of corruption, murder, intrigue, and redemption in small town America. With a dash of the supernatural.

Great character setup, well-paced, good story threads leading here and there before resolving themselves. There was a good sense of wondering whether the supernatural element was a result of the main character's subconscious and memories or where something spooky definitely was happening - that's answered definitively towards the end of the book and in an enjoyable way.

I'd definitely read another of Alan Lastufka's novels and enjoy it.

Wow this was definitely a very intriguing book...I’m not usually the type to read supernatural horror but i definitely don’t regret reading this one!

Adriana has been haunted by the same nightmare since she was a child, she is in a lake, in the dark murky water as a rotting arm threatens to drag her down.

By pure luck Adriana has landed a job as a sketch artist at the local police station just what she needs to satisfy the court in terms of her custody battle but as her nightmares become more intense and take over her ability to focus she begins to spiral out of control..

I loved that a corrupt mystery was pulled into this story and we uncover things as the main character does, the corruption runs deep and you’ll never guess just how far some are willing to go to keep it from coming to light.

Thank you to NetGalley, Shortwave media, and Alan Lastufka for giving me the opportunity to read this!!!

I honestly wasn't sure what to expect going into this book and I got something unexpected but not unenjoyable. It was fast paced and interesting. The paranormal aspect touches a toe into the horror feel and it felt gritty which I love in a horror novel but it almost felt more like a thriller. I'm conflicted about the genre, but either or, it was a good read.

When I say gritty, I mean it had a cast of characters that were not very good people, not very likable. I don't need likable characters in my horror books, in fact I prefer if everyone is messed up because that is the reality in the gritty side of the world. The dark side, the wrong path walkers if you will. If anyone knows about horror in true life, it's those people. They made the atmosphere of the book dark which always heightens the story for me.

I liked the plot. I thought it went a very interesting way and I enjoyed the ending and what happened to everyone. It wrapped up very well and a lot of times endings are such big misses so we really have to appreciate a good ending. There wasn't any point where I wanted to set it down, not a dull moment. I even hate politics and I didn't mind that the majority of the book was about a reelection.

Now we have to get into the ugly part. I have to say I hated the main character. I know I said I like unlikable characters in my horror but she was more then unlikable, I hated Adriana. I really don't want to be a judgmental jerk but she drove me nuts. She hated being under her fathers thumb but didn't try very hard to get a job at all it seemed. She left her kid in the most dangerous situations. You agree to go out for drinks when you have a drug addict watching your child? After you've already been gone for hours? I also don't believe he had ever watched the child before so that was wild.

Then there was the time where she depended on a girl who was deaf to stop her from leaving the house. In addition to that scenario she could have easily hurt her own child without realizing what she was doing and the poor girl wouldn't have known anything was going on. If she's asleep, she's not going to notice you leaving. She won't notice if you've lost your mind and hurt your child.

That's not all! Adriana walked her child as close as she could to a shooting scene. A three-year old doesn't need to see that. Having two three-year old kids myself I had a hard time watching this woman make such stupid choices.

The good news is besides really disliking Adriana and thinking her parenting skills leave a lot to be desired - the only other thing I didn't like was her relationship with Matt. I would have loved it, if Matt wasn't so cardboard feeling. He didn't feel like a real person. He made wild choices risking his job without even considering the repercussions. He just felt like a little shadow tag along. If he had still made the same choices but acted like he was worried a little bit, it would have felt more realistic. It just seemed like as soon as he saw her he felt some type of way and then was off in la la land for the rest of the book.

Face the Night sent me back to the days of the 80s horror almost and I am a sucker for 80s horror. I'm getting some Jason vibes from it. The paranormal aspect was done very well, and I really enjoyed the descriptions of her nightmares. Which come to think of it, gives me some Freddy Kruger vibes which I love.

Overall I enjoyed it and I look forward to reading more from this author.

On a side note, I find it super cool that he was born in Milwaukee, a city I visit often and one that is only an hour away from my hometown. I love to support a fellow Wisconsinite, even one that escaped Wisconsin and it's awful winters.

I'm a huge fan of all things horror. This book definitely had moments that had me leaping out of my skin with the intense foreboding the story built.

Adriana was a great main character. Her flaws and mistakes made her more believable. The struggles she goes through all while experiencing her own trauma and just trying to be a good person kept me invested.

Although I did enjoy this, I felt there were some unexplained storylines and a few characters who needed more development.

Overall, this is an intense read that suspense horror readers will enjoy.

I really wanted to like this book, but I felt a bit like it didn't know what it was and that identity struggle made for a slow, unsatisfying read, with a rushed ending.

Is it a family drama? Is it a social commentary on race and drugs in the 80s? Is it a romance? A police procedural? A paranormal haunt? That answer is, it is really none of those things, but there is a toe in each proverbial pond pulling readers in many different directions with no true course to follow.

I didn't *not* like the book, I just didn't really LIKE the book. I appreciated what it was trying to do with the mystery paired with the paranormal aspects, but it never really got there in the end for me. Also, from a disability advocate standpoint, I felt like the hearing impaired character was written from the most ableist view humanly possible, which was pretty disappointing.

Face the Night is a captivating mystery/thriller with a fantastic horror element that binds the narrative together. I love the blend of real life fears- the reality of being single, struggling, and feeling unsafe and unstable - and the slow creep of the supernatural. It's hard to put down once you start; the story will pull you under and refuse to loosen its grip

The puzzle pieces fit together so well and it's so satisfying how the story comes to a climax. Lastufka treats his story and his reads with respect, sharing hints and clues and red herrings but allowing the story to come to a close without any unexpected rug pulling. While I love guilt and negative emotions as metaphors or literal hauntings, I don't think enough time was spent with the ghost. The main characters are compelling but the sidelining of the black characters, who are the most impacted and ultimately the heart of the story, in favor of seeing the story through characters only incidentally impacted leaves a sort of void. There's so little emotional connection that even though all the loose ends get tied up, it feels a little empty. It's a good story, but I found myself interested in Deesha, her relationship with the ghost, and how she was using her and her husband's success to do some investigating of her own.

Solid 3.5/5 and I will absolutely continue to read Alan Lastufka's works!

Face the Night by Alan Lastufka. I was introduced to this book through a NetGalley release. I was intrigued by the cover art and I love anything paranormal and supernatural. This novel did not disappoint entirely.

Underground tattoo artist Adriana Krause has a talent for drawing faces that have no names and no voice of their own, which through a series of unfortunate events, lands Adriana a part-time job at her local police station. Adriana also has a talent less well-known of being able to see and talk to the dead. For most of her life, Adriana had been plagued with nightmares of a rotting corpse at the bottom of a lake. She has always ran from the corpse, but one night she decided to take the nightmare in a different direction and began exploring the landscape. Through her exploration she uncovers terrible secrets long hidden by the prominent society of small town Cellar, Ohio.

I liked this story. For some reason I am having a very hard time figuring out what I want to say about it 😕. This novel is very well written, easy to read, and has an interesting story. For those of us who have spent a lot of their life researching the paranormal and doing the field work in ghost hunting adventures, this story is actually very plausible to happen in real life. I think a big part of it is that a lot of the characters are just there, coming and going, and while they might have a tiny part in the story some of them are not explored to their full extent? I don’t know. I like the main characters – Adriana – very relatable. Her new manfriend – Officer Matt Hinkley – a nice guy in uniform. It is hinted throughout that Adriana has some sort of psychic abilities but it seems she has never explored them, so you can assume that rather than embracing them she instead hides from her senses. But that is what it is, an assumption. You don’t find out why, like her mother had abilities but died before Adriana could learn about it. She doesn’t really explore them in the novel, she just lives with these nightmares but really doesn’t seem to have an interest to find out why until randomly one night she changes her tune and does something different than the last 20 years. Everyone is just kind of there, nobody really jumps off the pages, including the screaming spirit. Plus you will never impress me with a “the ghost appears and flies around the room screaming at people” scene 😆.

There is a lot with this novel that isn’t explained. After so many years, why does this spirit come back now? Why is it attacking random people? Why is the spirit appearing in places that have absolutely no relevance to how he died? It all just doesn’t fit or come together in a manner that made me feel complete. I’ll give you one major example that follows throughout the book, but if I went through every one this would be a novel in itself 😋 We will work through Adriana here – When we are introduced to her she is a struggling tattoo artist (but with no aspirations to actually make it a career), she is arrested for accidentally shoplifting (so we meet Matt) and Adriana’s talent for drawing faces comes out, she is hired as a sketch artist for the police (really ends up being a dead end job that she runs out of because she only draws the one face), her deaf neighbor and psychologist mother help Adriana work through the face drawings which brings about the whole plot. So, basically the entire story line of Adriana being a tattoo artist, sketch artist, and everything revolving around that is basically not needed. I feel like it would have been more satisfying for me if Adriana was a struggling tarot card reader, the nightmares could remain the same, but the spirit could manifest itself through a session with his sister, Adriana could do automatic writing/drawing of the face, still have her neighbor help her out, still meet Hinkley because Adriana finds out what the spirit wants, etc. It was all just a tad clunky, but with the help of someone who knows more about the paranormal/supernatural world it could be a great story.

Rating: 3 stars
Content warning: murder

This book did not go the way I thought it would after reading the premise of the book and let me tell you that it was way better that my plot prediction. I loved everything about this story, the characters, the twists and the themes that was woven into the storyline. I think Alan Lastufka did a brilliant job with his first novel and I’m definitely going to be reading his next one!
I rate this book ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Just loved it, and not stop reading. I also loved the magical realism, the touch of creepiness and the suspense of what was going to happen next. Just brilliant x

This book was billed as a gripping mystery thriller. Unfortunately for me it did not cut the mustard. It was so slow and I found it very hard to get into in. I did not enjoy this book. It was poorly written and the characters were so wooden. An okay read.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

Face the Night, by Alan Lastufka, is a suspense with a focus on dysfunctional family relationships. It also has a lot of heart and had me rooting for the main character right from the start. There was a tiny bit of romance but it wasn't enough to take away from the main story. The characters were also fairly well developed without long, unnecessary details.
Adriana Krause, the 1st sketch artist for the Cellar Police force, has drawn an unknown person. No one knows who they are, only that it's not the suspect that they're desperately looking for. She's normally able to bring subjects to life but not this time.
Adriana has few friends at the precinct and is forced to pursue the dark face, from her nightmares, alone. Meanwhile her own father is trying to take custody of her little boy. So she desperately needs this job to keep her family intact. Unfortunately, the mystery face is all she's able to draw. Now new friends are the only people that she can turn to for help. Adriana turns to near strangers for help.

I went to bed last night excited to wake up this morning, knowing I’d be finishing this book today. It had mystery, drama, suspense, betrayal, the paranormal, and a hit of romance. My only disappointment is that this was Lastufka’s first novel – which means I can’t binge read more of his work.

Adriana is a young, single mom with a unique artistic ability and a determination to do anything she has to for the sake of her kid. While she’s been struggling on her own for years, she’s had to make a few changes in order to keep custody of her child from her manipulative Mayor father – which starts a chain of events that brings new friends and allies to her side, and forces her to confront her nightmares, her past, and her special gift.

As Adriana slowly descends into the grips of the nightmare that has haunted her all her life, you can see and feel the cracks forming in her psyche. Her independent nature wars with the notion that she now, after such a long time, has people she can turn to for help. Her psychological conflicts are so relatable -- it makes her easy to connect with. Adriana wears both her strengths and weaknesses with her head up, eyes on the prize.

I would rec this book for lovers of suspense, mystery, the paranormal, and female characters with iron cores.

(I received a free copy of this through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)