The author pleasantly surprised me with this book, especially since it was my first time reading their work.

Set in the intricate backdrop of a Louisiana small town, the story draws you in with its richly detailed, dark, and atmospheric narrative. It's teeming with eerie elements and unsettling occurrences.

The tale revolves around an unlikely friendship, delving deep into unbelievable family drama and exposing networks entrenched in old-fashioned beliefs and sinister activities, including the occult and murder. Winstead adeptly escalates the tension and maintains a compelling pace throughout.

This novel is refreshingly different and keeps you on your toes with its continuous twists and turns. The characters are captivating, and the overall experience is quite the rollercoaster.

Without giving away too much, if you enjoy unexpected characters, unique settings, gripping plots, and a relentless sense of suspense, this is a book you should definitely explore.

I know a lot of people loved this one, so I think I'm just the odd one out. Unfortunately I just couldn't get into the story and struggled to keep picking it back up.

Thank you to Netgalley for my arc!

This is the first novel I've read by Ashley Winstead. While I thought it was beautifully written and extremely atmospheric, there was a lot about this book I couldn't connect with as well.

Ruth was such a complex character. For the most part, I really liked her point of view and I thought some of her thoughts and emotions were haunting. I could fully understand how lost and beaten down she felt in her situation, but there was a naivety to her that I thought was extremely exaggerated. I also didn't love the main love interest, Everett and the relationship they had together. I found Ever extremely unlikeable.

My biggest problem with this book consisted of the plot. At a certain point, this book turns from an atmospheric, tense mystery to something completely ridiculous. It was overdramatic and there were many plot choices that didn't feel authentic to me. However, I did like the ending.

Overall, the small town oppressiveness and religious fervor are depicted in a really dynamic way which creates a fantastic atmosphere but the plot is just not as strong.

Great novel! This novel has everything. A murder wrapped up in a love story, wrapped up in power struggles in a small town. Great writing, great story, great characters!

I loved the synopsis and was immediately drawn in to reading this book. Also, it seemed like the perfect read for fall, full of mystery, town folklore, unsolved murders. Plus I really enjoy Ashley Winstead’s writing. Unfortunately I found the pacing for the first 3/4 of the book to be incredibly slow, it lost my interest. So, when things finally started picking up I wasn’t as invested as I could have been in the story or characters.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ashley Winstead and HarperCollins Canada for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

This wasn’t my favourite of Winstead’s novels. I did enjoy it, but it wasn’t the pacing that I was looking for. I liked the main characters and the little love story. And overall, I would recommend if you like Winstead’s writing.

4.5 stars

Holy moly!! Ashley Winstead does it again 👏

Her writing is phenomenal. I couldn't put this book down. I loved the FMC and MMC, Ruthie & Everett.

The religious aspect and small town worked so well. And let me tell you that ending 🤯

Thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins Canada & Sourcebooks Landmark for advance copies in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely adored this book ! It's gripping, atmospheric and thought-provoking. I stayed up past midnight several nights because I just couldn't put it down. At first I wasn't sure about the ambiguous ending, but I really appreciated her explanation for it in the author Q&A, and now 100% agree with her choice. I highly recommend this book !

TOTALLY SPEECHLESS 5 ⭐️ READ: “Midnight is the Darkest Hour” by Ashley Winstead! WOW just WOW!!!

BOOK REVIEW: 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤/5

Where do I even begin with this review?? I will be thinking about this southern gothic thriller for a LONG LONG time! Key word: GOTHIC!

This story takes place in a small southern town in Bottom Springs, Louisiana where religion is the heartbeat of all of its residents and women know their “place”.

There are several myths that haunt the town, but the most feared of all is that of the Low Man. He is said to sneak into the bedrooms of sinners on moonless nights to kill them! So when TWO skulls are discovered in the black swamp, the town thinks that the Low Man is back at it again. And if not him … then perhaps there is another serial killer in their midst 🔪

This book is A LOT of things and I absolutely LOVED it! It is dark, claustrophobic, chilling, sinister, evil and twisted in the best of ways!!!

Thank you kindly to @ashleywinsteadbooks @bookmarked @netgalley for my advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review! This book releases on October 3, 2023!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC! The writing style, the character development, and the atmospheric quality was everything I needed. I love a good thriller but I feel like this gave me so much more.

Something isn’t quite right in Botton Springs but can Ruth figure it out and trust herself to face the truth? This is a story like noon I have read before. Two unlikely friends become more connected as the story goes on and inconcievable truths become reality. The road through the story is filled with many twists and turns as Ruth and Ever look for answers. Personally, I enjoyed the book. I liked that it was quite different than anything I had read before and kept me engaged throughout. If you are looking for a unique yet engaging story that will keep you on your toes this is one to try.

Claustrophobic, macabre, and dark dark dark. The thriller plot across both timelines is engaging enough, but the stifling atmosphere is the real selling feature for me. I was often frustrated by Ruth’s stasis, but that made her feel more real to me than the rest of the characters. And I was a big fan of the final moments!

Thank you to HarperCollins Canada and NetGalley for the chance to read another one by Ashley Winstead, who’s quickly become an auto-buy and auto-recommend author for me!

This book is a chilling symphony of dread that orchestrates the murkiest depths of human darkness. Winstead's mastery over the macabre was a siren's call that beckoned me into a world where shadows dance with secrets, and the malevolent tendrils of the unknown wrap themselves around your heart, squeezing tighter with every turn of the page.

In the somber tapestry of Bottom Springs, Louisiana, the preacher's daughter, Ruth Cornier, emerges as a lone figure, a solitary candle struggling to illuminate the encroaching abyss. The prose in this book weaves a disquieting melody, capturing the torment of an outcast within the suffocating embrace of religious fervor. The Holy Fire Baptist's sermons cast a hellish glow upon the townsfolk, inciting fear of both deity and demon. Amidst this purgatorial landscape, the tales of the Low Man, whispered like curses in the dark, converge with reality in a haunting mixture of folklore & fear.

When the secrets of the town are unearthed, a skull in the swamp, accompanied with enigmatic symbols carved on the trees, it becomes the axis upon which the town's equilibrium teeters, setting in motion a grim ballet of revelation & ruin. Ruth & her best friend Everett, unearth the cryptic underbelly of Bottom Springs, unraveling it piece by piece until my head was spinning.

I absolutely loved the gothic atmosphere as thick as Southern humidity, draping every page in a shroud of impending doom. Deep-seated triggers of fundamentalism, abuse, and darkness lurk beneath every sentence, woven together in a way that’s both bewitching and terrifying while exposing the sinister shades of spirituality.

If you love your stomach being twisted into knots and exploring the chilling, dark secrets of an evangelist cult with a bit of Twilight for good measure then I suggest you pre-order a copy of "Midnight is the Darkest Hour’, out October 3rd.

Thank you to Ashley Winstead & NetGalley for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead absolutely blew me away! This is a complex, gripping, and sometimes disturbing tale of a young woman struggling to get out from under her fanatical evangelical parents and the townspeople who follow them blindly, even when dark and evil things are being done under their noses by those in power. She finds emotional refuge in another misfit, whose support buoys her throughout her teen and early adult years; but the relationship between the two has its own darkness in response to that done in the name of god.
This book is powerful, made even more so by the slow meting out of details through non-linear timelines. It addresses issues of religion, morality, love, power, and abuse in its many forms, in a way few other books do. It is sad and uplifting at the same time, and the reader is left to ask who to root for, when the choices are between different levels of evil.
This is an extremely well-written book that I couldn't put down. The cover is absolutely stunning as well.
I consider myself lucky to have received an ARC of #MidnightIstheDarkestHour from #NetGalley.

This was my first Ashley Winstead novel but I will be reading her other ones. Midnight is the Darkest Hour follows Ruth along with her best friend Everett as they try to find the killer of a body discovered in the swamp. They also learn some things about each other and their town along the way This novel kept me wondering what was going to be revealed next and I just had to keep reading to find out. There were some twists I didn't see coming. I recommend giving this a read.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a very thrilling thriller. There was nothing about the story that really captivated me so it felt like I was forcing myself to read it. I thought the setting and themes were interesting, and there was so much potential at the start, but it became almost a weird Twilight fan fiction and the ending was a cop-out.

This may be my favourite Winstead yet.

I love how this author has evolved and really carved out this niche in the thriller genre with a real sense of place and feeling, lots of vibes.

This felt very much like something HBO would adapt into a limited series, dark and cinematic.

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Canada for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Midnight is the Darkest Hour releases October 3, 2023

This story is set in a small town in Louisiana called Bottom Springs, and is told in a then/now narrative.
The opening scene had us learning about a human skull that was pulled out of Starry Swamp by a trapper. With evidence of blunt force trauma, it’s clear that this was a murder.

Our main character, Ruth, is the daughter of the parishes pastor. Her acts of rebellion include working at the local library, where she’s able to find the few pieces of illicit material that manage to slip through by way of donations — among those, a copy of <I>Twilight</I>.
(of all the books in the world to significantly reference, why Twilight… *shudders* It’s 2023, are we that incapable of moving on from this series?)

The idea of a compelling murder mystery hooked me, but I was dumbfounded when at just 6% into the story, the entire murder was explained — who the victim was, how they were impaled on the head, and the identity of who did it.
I reluctantly read the remainder of the book, but I truly believe this early reveal ruined all the suspense and build up for me.

This story was definitely too religion heavy for me to fully like it, and I don’t like the sentiment that was shared in the ‘conversation with an author’ section at the back of the book in relation to the ambiguous ending, where she says “In that moment, the reader becomes God.”
Yeahhhh thanks but no thanks. Just make it plain or simple, do they live or do they die?! Don’t turn it into this whole higher power thing when the whole point was for her to get out of this fundamentally religious and toxic household.

cw: <u>very</u> religious, ableism: side character has Tourette's, physical abuse, substance abuse, sexual violence, wiccans/cults/gangs/drug rings

This is being comped to Verity and I think that’s wildly inaccurate.

Read if you like:
- Twilight
- outcasts
- religion
- serial killers
- ambiguous endings

You had me at "small town librarian". I've enjoyed a couple of the author's previous books so was excited for this one. Nothing is quite as sinister as overly religious folks in a small town with all sorts of creepy things going on. The premise was sound but, unfortunately the execution was disappointing - the characters all read as quite flat, the love story didn't grab me at all, and I didn't care for the ambiguous ending. There were also far too many Twilight references.

Ashley Winstead is one of my favourite authors and she did not disappoint! Always love the stories she writes and descriptions that catapult you into the story. If you love thrillers, you'll love her books. 4 stars but only because her other novel The Last Housewife was just too good to top!