Midnight on Beacon Street is a horror story that I feel has a nostalgic feel that I never connected with but I feel would be good for young readers or fans of Fear Street by RL Stine.

I really wanted to love this book but unfortunately I didn’t. I definitely liked it enough to want to know how it ended but the ending really fell flat for me. It felt a little too random, not built up enough, the connections throughout the book just were not there. What I did enjoy though was the classic 1980s babysitter slasher vibe.

Thank you to NetGalley, Emily Ruth Verona, and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for this ARC!
This book had all of the 90s nostalgic vibes that for me I know and LOVE. With multiple POVs, I thought the author was successful in portraying the personalities of each character.
I especially felt Ben was portrayed appropriately for his age and often this can be a really challenging thing to do!
Truthfully, I was a bit let down by some of the “twists” in this book and found myself reading back through after the end because the conclusion didn’t make sense to me. I went back and analyzed several prior chapters to see if maybe I missed something, but I don’t think it did.
Overall I enjoyed this book. The cover promotes 90s horror film vibes and the author absolutely came through on her promise! I’ll continue picking up books like this, my millennial heart just cannot resist!
3 ⭐️

A suspenseful and entertaining debut thriller—and love letter to vintage horror movies—in which a teenager must overcome her own anxiety to protect the two children she’s babysitting when strangers come knocking at the door.

This book is very short and told in a non-linear format from various points of view. I tend to stay away from Horror novels as I am an absolute scaredy cat. However, it was slightly predictable which allowed me to enjoy the story without hiding under the covers. I think this is what they call a "cozy horror" that highlights the nostalgia of things that scared us in our youth but that we now face head on as adults.

"Monsters turned out to be just trees" - Taylor Swift

The writing was simple, but impactful and overall a great read.

this is an homage to classic slasher films, set in the 1990s, focused on a babysitter and the kids she’s looking after. i love the concept, but found it a bit slow and i just wanted more from it. on the plus side, it’s quite short, so it’s a good choice for a one-sitting, rainy, fall afternoon read!

tw: self-harm, domestic abuse

thanks to netgalley and harper perennial for the ARC of midnight on beacon street by emily ruth verona. all opinions are my own.

I liked a lot about this (the writing, the tension in the first half, the characters) but definitely feel like it's being mismarketed. From the synopsis & cover I thought this was going to be "When A Stranger Calls"-esque. It opening with an ominous home invasion statistic confirmed this assumption. But it's BARELY a home invasion story. Nothing really happens until the 80% mark and it's resolved quickly.
I would try out something else from this author but found this disappointing.

Set in October 1993, a babysitter and two kids receive a series of unsettling guests and before the night is over there’s a dead body on the kitchen floor. Pitched as an homage to classic horror movies, which it kinda is? I was expecting a fast paced, slasher story but this is more of a slow burn look at the cross section between fear and anxiety in young people.

Thank you @harperperennial for the #gifted copy of this ebook!

Picture this: You’re curled up on a couch, under a blanket at a sleepover with all of your friends in 1993. You’re 13, eating popcorn and popping in a new VHS movie you picked up at Blockbuster. That's exactly how I felt reading this book! Love that nostalgic feeling! This was a very fast short slasher book that I read in one sitting. My favorite part was really how it made me feel young again! This was entertaining and a fun debut by this author!

What’s it about? A babysitter watching kids…at night….and the prank calls start! This was such a fun tribute to 90s horror movies. Even the cover took me back to those days!

Eleanor is a single mom who goes out on a date leaving her young son and sassy teenager at home with their anxiety prone babysitter named Amy. Amy is everything a mom would want in a babysitter. She plays games, eats pizza and even has a dance party. Soon she has some unexpected visitors and it’s up to Amy to make sure nothing happens to these children and everyone makes it out alive!

Thank you to Harper Perennial for the gifted copy of MIDNIGHT ON BEACON STREET by Emily Ruth Verona!

Publication Date: 1/30/2024

MIDNIGHT ON BEACON STREET takes place on one quiet night in October 1993. It begins with a dead body lying at the feet of a young boy, leaving the reader with a lot of questions. The rest of the book goes back in time to tell the story of how this came to be.

Amy is a babysitter tasked with caring for two children, six-year-old Ben and twelve-year-old Mira while their single mother is out on a date. Amy is a fantastic sitter, overcoming her anxiety disorder to provide trustworthy and fun care for her charges. It is a pretty typical night of games, pizza, and fun until things take a horrible turn, heading down the path to that dead body from the beginning.

I picked this book up early in October when I wound up with a #Spookoplathon reading prompt that was perfect for it and I wound up really enjoying my time with this book. I would say that it wound up a bit different from what I expected going in as there's more of as slow burn build up after that initial really intriguing chapter, but I wound up really enjoying that aspect. The way the author plays with the timelines backing away from that midnight focal point was really well done and I though that the blend of Amy's background and the kids' backgrounds worked well together and helped keep the tension building.

Amy is obsessed with horror films which I feel like is something that can be overdone in horror books, but I really enjoyed the way the author used Amy's interest in films to amp up the horror vibes without making it the whole focus. I also appreciated that we saw Amy struggling with her anxiety, but working through it and still being a strong main character!

This was a fantastic debut from Emily Ruth Verona and I look forward to seeing what she brings out next!

I love a good horror thriller, and for it being Verona’s first published novel, it was hit out of the park. Every moms worst nightmare - highly recommend.

Thank you to the publisher for the arc!

This unfortunately wasn’t my favorite. The writing kept flip flopping all over the place and I didn’t care for any of the characters.

This started off really strong but the climax and ending left me really disappointed. I liked the idea of the way the timeline was written but felt like it didn’t actually add anything to the story.

This book takes the classic babysitter horror trope and turns it on its head. Amy is sitting for Ben and Mira on what turns out to be a very eventful night with a revolving door of visitors until one person ends up dead on the kitchen floor. As much as I wanted to be drawn in and fully immersed in this book I felt like at times it lost me a little bit when focusing on Ben’s POV versus Amy’s. However it was very eerie and unsettling and will keep you guessing until the very end.

Creepy, disorienting, spooky vibes abound in this book. Tons for horror fans to enjoy, and the red herrings in the plot will keep readers turning the pages. Looking forward to more from this author! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this in advance of publication.

Everything about slashers and spooky season I love. This read like the first Halloween movie and I was hooked from page 1

Emily Ruth Verona’s Midnight on Beacon Street is a novel with a concept that has such potential. I purposely chose to read this book during spooky season because I was expecting it to be so atmospheric and nostalgic. How could it not, being a thriller set in the 90s during October, chronicling a teenage babysitter battling to keep her young charges alive? Unfortunately, as I quickly learned, there’s a lot of ways this promising premise can go disastrously south. That’s not to say that I did not enjoy this book, but rather that I kept expecting more until I realized I was nearly at the end of the story and nothing significant had happened. Talk about disappointing.

Verona lightly touches on 90’s nostalgia and pop culture, especially by way of slasher movies, but I expected there to be so much more. It makes me question if Verona was actually a child of the 90s herself to get things so terribly wrong. You could take the characters in her story and plop them down into a book about any decade, and they would still fit - they are that generic. There were so many special and unique aspects of being a kid growing up in the 90s that kids of other generations did not and will not experience, and Verona failed to capitalize on any of them. Midnight on Beacon Street lacks any and all of those generational nuggets that would make any Millennial remember and long for their childhood.

Furthermore, the cover of this book gives off such ominous and spooky vibes, but this novel is just not that. There is an incredible lack of atmosphere between the pages of this book. We are talking about a time when parents were not quite as guarded as they are nowadays, and when people were generally unreachable because there were no cell phones! Prime material for a horror novel about babysitting! But Verona just never drove home how dire of a situation the characters of this novel were in.

Every aspect of this novel was downplayed. The revelation at the end came out of left field and was entirely underwhelming. I actually felt like I had missed something because it felt so disjointed and did not make sense.

In all, this was a novel that could have been great, but isn’t. I enjoyed reading it, but found myself sorely disappointed at the end because I wanted so badly to love this book, but didn’t.

I was excited to read this because it sounds like a good, creepy thriller. 41% in and nothing had happened except a girl babysitting two kids. And the timeline…chapters go back and forth right down to “3 hours and 59 minutes to midnight” which I just found obnoxious.

I received an advanced copy from netgalley in exchange for a review and opinions are my own.

For the 90’s horror lovers! I was not able to put this book down! Classic horror story with a new twist!

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me a chance at reading this book.

I think the book is going to be polarizing in the reviews. The issue being of how it is written. I do not think the narrative is all that great. It has this 'detached' narrator, and the way the plot goes on is very... dry? I don't even know if that's the right word. It just struggles to make the book interesting, creepy, or entertaining. It's almost like getting someone who has never dabbled in horror but mainly in fiction for older folk trying to write for younger folk.

I made it through 10% of the book and I knew it wasn't for me.

I wanted to like this more than I did. The premise was great, the cover was great, but the length and its thriller/slasher-teasing focus did not work for me. It was incredibly repetitive and I found myself skimming multiple chapters to get back to the action (and that's not normal for me...I usually read for the characters and vibes). I deeply appreciated the attempt the author made to discuss anxiety in multiple forms, but it didn't always work here.