This is definitely a book dedicated to the 80s/90s horror....that was not for me. I could not get into this and I could not become invested in any of the characters. This is a short novel, of which not much happens. It is slow. I really struggled with this, but it might have just been me! Thank you to the publisher for the early e-copy.

girl what the hell was this? It started off so strong and I can see how she wanted to weave in tension with the time skips and different perspectives, but it just made everything so obvious (a flashback chapter would mention something that would become important in the very next chapter), clunky with how much the time skipped around, and every chapter besides Ben's would just screech the pace to a halt. Her descriptions are amazing and I can see some of the characters being very well thought-out, but oof this should've been a short, short story

**Spoilers**

The VERY VERY VERY beginning was so good! I thought everyone was going to end up slaughtered by a psychopath and only the little boy was left alive.

Boy was I wrong. This book was soooo boring! So much story that was pointless! The action didn’t even start until near the end, and it was definitely not thrilling.

Murder by self defense doesn’t qualify a book as a thriller if 95% of your story line is about babysitting.

Thank you so much Harper Perennial, Emily Ruth Verona, and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and honestly review this book.

A fast mysterious read. Check it out from the local library. The library will have it. It is well written but a little predictable.

3.5, rounded up

surprised at the low rating this one has (for Good Reads). it's a little slow and meandering at times but overall, i enjoyed reading it.

A quick read that would have been better published in October, or at least September. I fear it will be forgotten by the time Halloween comes around.

The opening of the little boy standing in a pool of blood should be the factor that pulled you in to read. A statement. Yet this book went downhill soon after.

It was supposed to be a thrilling read but this end up to be a boring read. The thriller parts were so slow to get to as we approached almost more than 50% mark for it to come to a climax and yet even that felt anti-climatic. I always enjoyed books with alternate POVs and time jump but here, it was executed poorly. Its so confusing to understand at which timeline we are at cuz the non-linear timeline makes this so much harder to understand the whole thing. I dont know if its on purpose but the author should take a better approach to this so as to let reader unravel the puzzle properly.

Sad to say, didnt enjoy this one.

Thank u to Netgalley and Harper Perrenial for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book!
This books was enjoyable but not remarkable for me. I enjoyed the POV changes but not the constant back and forth of the night’s timeline. The plot twist I didn’t see coming but it was somewhat anticlimactic. The villain character felt flat to me. I would read more from this author and look forward to future books. Overall a good debut, in my opinion.

I don't remember picking out this book, but I have been trying to get caught up on all of the books that have been patiently waiting for me to get to them while I've been in my slump. This happened to be the oldest on my NetGalley list, so I dug in!

This book plays out like it could be a standard slasher, however it's laid out in a way that invites the reader to gather the clues and put together the story.

The story is told in short slices from the lives of different characters, in the roughly 18 hours before midnight. While I think that the fact that each segment may, or may not, have information about what's to come, is a good way to throw red herrings and misleading paths into the story, I also think that there may be just a bit too many. Also I did get confused at times with the seemingly random time jumps between the segments. Overall, it wasn't a very big issue though, just a slight bump in an otherwise wonderful story.

I admit that I had only correctly figured out half of the puzzle before the big reveal. When I got to the segment detailing the events that take place around midnight, I was pleasantly surprised that the story didn't go in any of the ways that I had imagined.

This was an imaginative story, a really interesting take on the classic babysitter set-up. I really enjoyed it, and I'm hoping it may have pulled me out of my slump, at least a bit. My sincerest apologies to the author for taking so long to get to it.

I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Definitely a nod to the classic horror/slasher films of the 80's-90's. But this book treads new ground and delivers lots of thrills and chills. Sleep with your lights on!

Didn't finish this, was not at all what I expected from the synopsis. Certainly not bad, but don't feel that we need this in our collection.

Midnight on Beacon Street
By: Emily Ruth Verona

I was able to receive an arc through NetGalley to read this new YA horror. I actually really liked it, I gave it a 4 stars rating.

This is set in 1993 and it goes back and forth, before and after midnight, which is when a murder takes place.

This follows 17 year old Amy who is babysitting her 2 siblings while their mom is out on a date. A murder happens and some weird and sinister things start taking place.

If you like retro vibes and YA horror I would recommend this book. I felt like I was watching a movie and not reading one.

I thought this was really well written and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. I think it will find readers at our library, so we will definitely be purchasing for the collection.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
So the summary of this book and the cover were a bit misleading. I expected to be reading a thriller or horror novel and this really was not. It was ok but not at all what I was hoping for.

Love a good 90's horror throwback. Perfect for getting ready for spooky season and autumn. Millennials will recognize the settings and themes. Meh storyline though.

This was an unfortunate DNF, so I won’t be rating elsewhere. It didn’t live up to what I expected, and unfortunately it felt fruitless to finish it.

The gorgeous horror movie inspired cover of Midnight on Beacon Street might be part of its issue - while references to classic horror movies abound throughout the book, this hardly fits into the genre of thriller or horror.

This is a short, slow book where not much happens besides deep character development. There is a major lack of suspense - I’m not sure there is any at all, to be honest, despite having the perfect setup for some serious creepiness.

The book also has a nonlinear timeline, which is a trope I usually enjoy in thrillers because it helps add nuance to aspects of the story and typically builds suspense. These time jumps, though, more so fractured any possible tension in the story and instead felt really random. You could probably take out all of the flashbacks to the main character’s childhood & not miss anything. More than anything, this style made the story feel disjointed and kept me from experiencing any sort of suspense.

Lastly, the big reveal at the end just did not work for me. It made such little sense, and there was no real effort to flesh out the motives. It felt way too random for me (WHY would this character do this?), while at the same time being extremely predictable.

Those are my gripes, but there are certainly positives as well. I enjoyed Amy as a main character; she fit the bill for an 80s horror movie protagonist. I liked the attempt at bringing mental illness and trauma into the storyline; I think it was a bit underdeveloped, but this is also a debut so I can allow some grace. And the author is legitimately good at the craft of writing! It’s hard to avoid cheesiness when doing an homage to classic horror, but she had all the right elements…they just didn’t mix together quote right.

Overall, I didn’t love this one but I am intrigued by the author and will likely read whatever she writes next.

2.5 stars rounded up. Unfortunately, I wanted to like this one more than I did. The concept is rock solid -- a babysitter watches two kids and things go horribly wrong. It's the plot of many horror films, and while I like what Verona attempted to do with the story, it felt tedious instead of suspenseful. Verona did put a lot of time and effort into the characters but it wasn't enough to make the short novel sing to me. I would consider picking up her next work depending on the concept. Thanks to NetGalley and Harper for the arc.

Thank you to @Netgalley and @Harperperennial for the opportunity to read this ARC and leave my honest review!

3.5 stars

What immediately drew me to read this book was the setting: that 80s/90s nostalgia feel, the young high school babysitter watching the surly preteen sister and her innocent younger brother, and of course, the unsettling crimes happening throughout the area. While I am not an avid horror movie buff, I was still able to appreciate a lot of the old horror movie references throughout the book and it definitely helped give you that nostalgic feeling.

The only thing that threw off the pacing a bit was the constant jumping back and forth in time and also between POVs - keeping to one POV or keeping to one timeline would probably make for a smoother read. All in all, I was on the edge of my seat with the tension and found it hard to put this book down once I started! Was the plot a little predictable? Maybe. Was it an enjoyable read? Definitely!

Midnight on Beacon Street is the debut thriller from Emily Ruth Verona. Set in New Jersey in October 1993, this is an homage to the slasher and horror films of the 70s and 80s.

Being a child of the 80s and 90s, I was really looking forward to getting into this one. Amy is babysitting 6 year old Ben and 12 year old Mira, having a normal night when she starts getting crank calls, her boyfriend shows up, and things spiral out of control. You wouldn't think that Halloween would be her favorite movie, since it's the quintessential babysitter slasher movie, but that's what she watches once the kids go to bed. Now, she's just waiting for Eleanor to come home, then she hears the back door open...

This was a short novel, just over 200 pages, so there was a lot to pack in. For being a thriller, I didn't find it very thrilling or suspenseful. Yes, there were some creepy and scary things happening, but there just wasn't a feeling of suspense around it. The pacing was pretty slow, and I didn't understand what the flashback chapters were there for. Those could have easily been a small memory of Amy's in the regular chapters. The switching of viewpoints from Amy to Ben didn't really add anything to the story, either; we could have just stayed with Amy the entire time. Maybe had Ben's view for the preface, then the rest Amy's. I was just disappointed in this one.

All in all, it's an okay horror homage if you're looking for something short with no gore.

Thank you to @NetGalley and @HarperPerennial for a digital copy for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.