Ⓑⓞⓞⓚ Ⓡⓔⓥⓘⓔⓦ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

𝕋𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕚𝕕𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝔻𝕠𝕠𝕣
𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗿𝗼𝗲
Ghost Thriller
368 pages

Sʜᴏᴿᴛ Sʏɴᴏᴘsɪs
The three Finch sisters love exploring abandoned homes in their neighborhood. Then, they discover one with a strange row of doors. Each girl has a key to open a door specific to each of them. What happens from there follows them to their adult lives.

Mʸ Tᴴᴼᵁᴳᴴᵀs
Eerie and rather spellbinding, I couldn’t wait to find out what this haunted house was about. The story didn’t disappoint, giving me all the paranormal vibes while keeping me on the edge of my seat.

Along with the horror, there is a spotlight on the sisters’ relationship with each other. After the death of one of them, the other two struggle, not only with the death but with their strained relationship with each other.

Each sister shares their POV as we read about the present and flashback to the past to see where their problems began. Mental health, death, secrets, and the paranormal all play a part in the story.

The darkness in the house is a major part of this story, yet I am still unsure of what it is. Maybe that was the point; to leave it up to the reader’s imagination.

This book moved a bit slowly for me but was an excellent read all around. Even though this is a dark book, the relationships were realistic and the ending wrapped things up without solving everyone’s problems. It was well worth the read.

💕Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing this ebook for me to read and review.

One night clouded with darkness changed three sisters' lives forever. A decrepit home awaits them calling them home, to finish what they started years ago.
When Meg Finch receives a distraught call from her sister, Claire she knows she must stop her from returning to the house. But she is too late….
Reeling from the devastating death of Claire the remaining two sisters Meg and Esther can not shake the visions that follow them making the need to return to their childhood nightmare inevitable. Is the house alive? Who or what is responsible for Claire’s death and can they find out before they are next?
Overall rating 4/5
This book had many tropes that I love - a dilapidated house, things that go bump in the night, mysterious past and big reveal. I was hooked from the beginning and was hanging on the edge of my seat. I was however, a little let down by the twist at the ending, I was hoping that it would end with a spooky unhappy ending. But do appreciate the realistic outcome.

*Thank you to Katrina Monroe, Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley for the ARC copy. I am freely leaving my honest review.

I loved Through The Midnight Door by @katrinamonroeauthor 🖤 The book explores how childhood trauma can affect relationships with your family and later in life. It is an emotional story that is full of grief and the horrors that can come along with dark emotions. I recommend adding this book to your spooky season list. It’s the perfect read for dreary, fall weather.

(This same review was shared on the Barnes & Noble website)

Atmospheric and creepy, it's well-written and immersive. I was engaged with the darker themes that the story explores. I loved the multiple timelines and POVs. The pacing is slow, but I found the suspense and tension kept my interest well enough. Overall a very enjoyable reading experience for me. Would definitely read from this author again in the future.

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press, NetGalley, and Katrina Monroe for the opportunity to review this truly spooky book. The story is about the Finch sisters and their relationship especially how their relationship and lives changed over the years after they visited a mysterious house. This house was not only mysterious but had some rather unusual characteristics that managed to find the darkness within a person and feed off it. When the girls visited the house for the first time they each entered a room that was just for them and the house showed them something scary, scary enough that they never told their sisters about it. However, it began the slow process of destroying the relationship between them all. They don’t come back to the house until Claire commits suicide in the house or is it a murder?
The story is told from the point of view of each sister and back and forth in time. The author did this well and kept the story flowing in a smooth manner. This is an excellent story and I really enjoyed reading it.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book. I was so intrigued by the description I had to read this book! The writing and characters were well done but I just couldn't get into it. I tried multiple times and ended up DNF.

This was really good. I enjoyed this storyline and would recommend it. Thank you Netgalley for the arc.

"Through the Midnight Door" by Katrina Monroe is a chilling and atmospheric journey that hooks you from the very first page. Set in the eerie backdrop of a decaying town filled with abandoned properties, the novel follows the Finch sisters as they encounter an ominous house with endless hallways of strange doors, each leading to a different, mind-bending horror.

The strength of this novel lies in its ability to blend an unsettling atmosphere with a deeply personal narrative about sisterhood and generational trauma. Monroe crafts a world that feels both hauntingly familiar and disturbingly off-kilter, making it hard to predict what lies beyond each door. The atmosphere is not just chilling; it’s immersive, drawing readers into a maze where the boundaries of reality seem to twist and bend.

What I found particularly intriguing was how Monroe uses the house as a metaphor for the hidden, often unspoken fears and secrets that linger within families. It’s a narrative that is as much about confronting personal demons as it is about surviving the literal ones that lurk in the shadows.

"Through the Midnight Door" manages to be both a deeply affecting exploration of family bonds and a gripping, spine-tingling horror tale. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy a blend of emotional depth with supernatural thrills, especially those who appreciate a story that keeps them questioning what’s real long after they’ve closed the book. If you’re looking for a novel that’s chilling, intriguing, and a bit mind-bending, this one should definitely be on your list.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I jumped into this book because I wanted to try something different. I normally don’t read horror so this was a bit out of my comfort zone.

This is first and foremost a story about sisters. The Finch sisters follow a neighborhood kid into a creepy house. The house is abandoned and feels haunted. They use an old skeleton key to enter a creepy room and they feel the darkness for the first time.

Years later the sisters are haunted by a depression. Claire commits suicide in the old house that they explored as children. Was it murder? Was it suicide? Or was it a darker force at hand?

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was atmospheric and the pacing was good. I liked the back story of the sister’s childhood.

This is a perfect book for people that like the show Stranger Things.

Thank you to netgalley for a chance to read this book.

Through The Midnight Door by Katrina Monroe is a horror novel about three sisters and a haunted house.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Poisoned Pen Press 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)
As children, Meg, Esther and Claire Finch played as any other sisters do.  As grown-ups, they barely speak to one another.

As children, they entered one of the abandoned houses in their dying town of Blacklick, and came out changed.  This house was strange, with unending corridors and doors.  Each child had entered a different room through keys that had been waiting for them.  They each had a horror-filled experience, and none of them ever spoke of it again.  But each sister always remained haunted by the memories of that house, and what had occurred within.

As adults, Claire became a social worker, Esther married Ryan and had a son Brandon, and Meg became a delivery driver.  All of them tried to fight the darkness.

Now, many years later, Claire calls her eldest sister Meg, and tells her she has figured out how to make the darkness go away.  Meg rushes to that abandoned house, only to find her sister hanging in one of those dreadful rooms.

Although Meg and Esther have always had a somewhat tumultuous relationship, they will try to work together to find out what truly happened to their sister -- before the darkness claims them too.


My Opinions:
There is a heads up by the author that this book contains themes of mental illness, self-harm, suicide, and the loss of a young child.  I appreciated that.  I read it anyway.

Yes, this book has horrific topics, and yes it is about evil, and has a villain you will love to hate. It has a haunted house that will remain vivid in your memory.  But mainly, this book is about family.  It is about secrets, and overall the lack of openness between family members.  It is about guilt which festers into a darkness that can sometime over-take a person.  In one way it is a rather depressing book.

The story is told through the perspectives of each sister, and the chapters alternate between past and present times.  It worked well, no confusion.

Bottom line, it is a haunted house story with a rather dysfunctional family thrown in.  The author provided vivid descriptions of the house -- I could "see" the stairway, the hall, the doors.... The characters were all deep, and at times I didn't like any of them.  At other times I wanted to slap them to wake them up, or give them a hug and say "well done".

Overall, this is a well written horror story.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for allowing me an ARC of this story! This is probably one of the top thriller/horror books I have read this year. I had chills the entire time I read it. This was one of those books where I stayed up late finishing it because I was obsessed with it. The plot, the characters, the twists, it was all amazing. I would recommend this to anyone and everyone looking for a thriller/horror read!

So, I need to preface this review. I like horror, but not graphic crazy horror. I am more into the creepy, the ghostly, the gothic. To give you an idea of what draws me: my favorite creepy read is The Winter People by Jennifer McMahan, my favorite ghostly story is Ghost Story by Peter Straub or any of the earlier Simone St. James, and gothic/creepy is Wild Fell by Michael Rowe. So my personal review of this is based on what I like and if you are really into horror then you might disagree!

Meg, Esther and Claire are sisters. When they were young they were dared by a young boy named Donny to go into an abandoned house. However, this house was unique in that it has several doors with locks on the upper floor. Each girl found the key to a different door. Each sister went in and experienced something that affected them for the rest of their lives. Meg has moved away and barely eeks out a living door dashing and playing gigs at night. Esther is married with a son, but has severe OCD. Claire is working with the Department of Human Services, going to school to get her social workers license. They do not discuss the past or what happened. However, Claire calls Meg one night saying she has figured out how to beat the darkness. Meg knows that Claire has returned to the abandoned house. Meg rushes to get there, but is too late. Claire has committed suicide. Claire and Esther decide to put aside their differences and look into Claire's death as they have become suspicious about what really happened.

The story is told through the POV of each sister, and goes back and forth from past to present. This works very well in building up the tension and developing the characters. Each sister, unbeknownst to the others, is trying to protect them. Because they do not talk often, each sister's perspective of the others is skewed. Meg is seen as selfish, Esther as a fighter, and Claire was "the light". There is also a family secret/tragedy that is not discussed yet affected the family greatly. I was drawn into this story and to these characters, and was right there with them trying to figure out what the connection was, and then how in the world do you get rid of it! I loved how Esther and Meg are fighting to become closer, but in order to do this they realize they have to face the shadow together, because they are stronger together.

The author masterfully creates an oppressive, dark, tense atmosphere that lingers in every scene and place of the book. I could feel the tension in the sisters as they were trying to work through what happened to them in the past and how it erupted in the present. The "shadow" was creepy as all get out!

The plot is cohesive. It is more of a slow burn- but this is important because all the elements evolve to a very satisfying conclusion. I saw some reviewers compare it to Shirley Jackson novels, and I do see elements that resemble those stories.

I am adding this author to my list to read this October when spooky season is upon us!

Thank you to NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press, and Katrina Monroe for the ARC. This is my honest and voluntary review.

I received an ARC of this one quite a while back, and had put it off until closer to its publication date but then got behind on my reading. It had been one of my most anticipated reads of the year because it sounded creepy and thriller-esque... and I just... I don't know how I feel about it. For now, I'm going to give it three stars because it wasn't necessarily bad and it wasn't overly great. I may change my rating once I've sat with it a little bit longer. I think it just wasn't what I was expecting. I'm sure there are a lot of people who will enjoy this novel, it just wasn't for me.

It was an interesting concept, but I spent a lot of time confused about how things intersected, and sometimes confused about what was going on at all. These sisters spent basically their whole lives hiding things, feeling guilt, or shame, which was then diagnosed as depression or an anxiety disorder when they all know that something happened in that house. They tortured themselves for years because of that day, when they didn't need to... it just kind of bugged me. All the hallucinations and paranoia was sometimes a little too much to take.

The writing itself was good, although with it being an ARC there were a few errors that I saw, but that happens sometimes. The changing timeframes and points-of-view were woven together well and weren't too difficult to follow. This was my first novel by the author, and I may give one of her other books a chance.

All in all, if you like multi-POV and jumping timelines, sisters' traumatic bond, deep paranoia, ghost stories, or just a kind of creepy novel, then give this one a try.

Through the Midnight Door is a great spin on the traditional haunted house story. The added eeriness of turmoil between 2 sisters adds to the overall tension and suspense of the story. The details describing the house are captivating. Any time there are abandoned houses, or even somewhat towns, it is fascinating. This is another excellent Poisoned Pen Press print you will not want to miss.

✨Through the Midnight Door by Katrina Monroe✨

Genre: Psychological Horror
Pages: 368

📚Three sisters. Three keys. Three unspeakable horrors.

The Finch sisters once spent long, hot summers exploring the dozens of abandoned properties littering their dying town—until they found an impossible home with an endless hall of doors…and three keys left waiting for them. Curious, fearless, they stepped inside their chosen rooms, and experienced horrors they never dared speak of again.

Now, years later, youngest sister Claire has been discovered dead in that old, desiccated house. Haunted by their sister’s suicide and the memories of a past they’ve struggled to forget, Meg and Esther find themselves at bitter odds. As they navigate the tensions of their brittle relationship, they draw unsettling lines between Claire’s death, their own haunted memories, and a long-ago loss no one in their family has ever been able to face. With the house once again pulling them ever-closer, Meg and Esther must find the connection between their sister’s death and the shadow that has chased them across the years…before the darkness claims them, too.

📝This was a page-turner. I think I finished it in one sitting. Although the story has a main thriller plot, I think the story is mostly about sisterhood, guilt and grief. It examines how the darkness of our past can continue to haunt our present.

There are 3 POVs (Claire, Meg, Esther) that flip back and forth in time.

💫Thank you @poisonedpenpress for my #gifted copy💫

Blacklick, Indiana is the kind of crumbling small town most people fight to get away from. Meg Finch almost managed it, before collapsing into a strung-together life of gig work and the perpetual struggle to keep her head above water. Her younger sister Esther actually made it all the way out to the Chicago suburbs, with a job in project management, a husband and a twelve year-old son. Youngest sister Claire didn’t even try to leave, living with her parents while attempting to do good as a social worker for the many desperate families in the area.

Once upon a time, the three sisters were close. That ended one summer when they were kids, as a terrifying encounter with a decaying house and its impossible hallway changed their lives forever. Each girl chose a door. Each girl was given an awful burden. Claire’s was perhaps the most viscerally felt:

QUOTE
Claire froze. She couldn’t tell if the voice had come from the room or inside her own head. The floor rumbled beneath her hands, almost like a purr. The dark seemed to undulate around her, stroking her skin and hair. She thought of the spider on the stairs, but this was different, like if water were solid. The dark bent softly against her arms and neck, velvety and thick. It made her skin crawl.

We’re here with you. We’ll always be with you.

Her voice crackled with tears. “Who are you?”

The darkness pulsed and then she felt the velvety touch move from her neck to her ears, to her nose. It climbed inside and slithered down her throat, viscous and sour. She felt sick, her belly heavy, like she’d swallowed too much water.
END QUOTE

Afterwards, none of them want to talk about what happened in the house or what they saw or experienced. As they grow older, guilt and shame – some of it entirely unearned – push them further and further apart. But then Claire calls her eldest sister one night, saying she’s tired of the pain and is ready to put an end to it all. A frantic Meg races to the abandoned house to find her sister dead, swinging from a noose in a room at the end of that terrible hallway.

Neither Meg nor Esther is able to accept the verdict that Claire committed suicide. Driven by grief, they begin to investigate Claire’s life, both together and separately, as their own hurtful history causes them to lash out at one another. Meg, being more introspective but also more passive than her paranoid, impulsive sister, wonders why they’re really making these choices, especially when their inquiries could be putting another at-risk family through unwarranted agony:

QUOTE
She understood why Esther wanted to do it. Meg had come to the same instant conclusion Esther had. It made sense. Here was a guy with a history of violence who was meeting their sister, a woman who would have been responsible for removing his children from his care, and then she ends up dead. Open and shut, right? But then Meg heard Claire say it again in her head: would it make you feel better?

Would it? Or were they looking for reasons to believe what’d happened to Claire wasn’t their fault? That they couldn’t have stopped it?
END QUOTE

As they begin to unearth what really happened to Claire, they discover too the solution to the mystery that festers at the heart of their family’s shaky foundation. Will the truth finally allow the sisters to grant each other absolution and grace? Perhaps just as importantly, will it allow them to forgive themselves?

The almost-physical manifestations of depression, anxiety and paranoia in this book make perfect monsters for the sisters to battle, even as they find themselves solving far less supernatural crimes. Their prickly relationship, especially, reads so true to life. As an eldest child, I found myself rolling my eyes at Esther in the exact same way I would at my own middle sibling. Perhaps most gratifyingly, I, like Meg, came to appreciate her sister in the end.

Katrina Monroe writes deftly of sibling dynamics and the contradictory compulsion to protect the ones we love by staying away from them. Through The Midnight Door is a thoughtful horror novel for anyone with difficult family relationships exacerbated by mental illness. As it poignantly shows, there is almost always hope for better, if people will only commit themselves to honesty and genuine care for one another.

4/5✨

This one starts slow but is worth it if you love the following: haunted houses, past/present timeline jumping, multiple POV, confronting trauma, and a wonderful resolve.

The characters in this were well-written and the twist(s) were great. This is my first book by Monroe and now I am looking to read more in their catalog! Also, when I see the author is with Poisoned Pen Press, I know they are going to be wonderful!

As always, thank you to NetGalley, Katrina Monroe, and Poisoned Pen Press for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars. In Katrina Monroe’s previous novel, Graveyard of Lost Children, I really enjoyed how she combined elements of horror and domestic drama to create novel that was just as emotionally resonant as it was chilling. In Through the Midnight Door, she combines those genres again, but, for me, not quite as successfully.

Through the Midnight Door is at its heart a book about sisters. In childhood, Meg, Esther, and Claire loved exploring abandoned places throughout their downtrodden town – until, that is, they had horrific experiences in a spooky, derelict house. Those experiences haunt them, in ways specific to each of them, into adulthood…culminating in a distraught Claire calling Meg in the middle of the night, before being found dead in that same house of nightmares.

Using horror elements, Monroe explores the devastating effects of intergenerational trauma, destructive family secrets, deep and dark and visceral fears, and the complexities of sisterhood. Her characters are vivid and interesting, and she delves deeply into the psychology and inner lives of each of the sisters. I felt like I really understood their motivations and desires, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with all of their choices (or, in the case of Esther, like them very much at all). I also liked the fact that Monroe set the story in a dying industrial town in the Midwest, which added to the atmosphere and served as a backdrop for the desperation and desolation felt by many of the characters.

I just feel like the balance was a bit off here. I was hoping for more of a haunted house vibe in the vein of The Haunting of Hill House (Monroe chose to place the abandoned house on Hill Street, after all). I haven’t read House of Leaves yet (I just need to find the energy for it, LOL), but I feel like the house’s impossible architecture could’ve been inspired by that novel as well. Instead of leaning into those frightening inspirations, though, much more focus of the novel is placed on the sisters’ relationships and the ways they try to heal from childhood trauma. It’s thoughtful and emotionally rich – it’s just not nearly as scary as I had hoped. There was a missed opportunity to spend more time in that unsettling house, with those magic keys and those doors that lead to the key bearers’ greatest fears.

As a whole, Through the Midnight Door works as a compelling family drama, using a horror lens as a metaphor for trauma. It just wasn’t the horror novel I expected or hoped it would be. But Katrina Monroe has such interesting ideas and such a unique perspective that I know I’ll be drawn to her future novels. Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for the complimentary reading opportunity.

This novel examined the Finch sisters’ complex sibling relationship that’s complicated by a traumatic past and confounded by a shared supernatural experience that spanned decades. We get to know the 3 sisters through their respective POVs, and understand their backstories through multiple timelines. It’s a slowburn suspense horror that I had a hard time getting into at first. But after the first half, the missing pieces started to fall into place and I found myself devouring this haunting book. Note that guilt and depression played major roles here and I couldn’t help but get sucked into the sinkhole so just be sure to check the TW before you read this book. The ending was bittersweet, but I still had some unanswered questions. If you enjoy horror mysteries and don’t mind the slow suspense buildup, then this is for you. It’s the perfect end-of-summer read — not too scary, but just enough paranormal elements to induce goosebumps.

Thank you @poisonedpenpress for my eARC.

This book hooked me from when Meg answered her phone in the middle of the night to find her youngest sister on the other end, clearly experiencing some emotional turmoil that led her back to a place the sisters swore they would never go back to. Which is in the very beginning so I knew I would have a hard time putting this one down.

I loved the atmosphere, the house is creepy, and even though I'm just reading about it I'm thinking this is a place I would never want to go. The multiple timelines and POV's were woven together so well, that there wasn't any point where I wanted to get back to a certain one. The way the sister's relationship changed and grew from where they were at the beginning of the book was so good and had me feeling all kinds of ways. While I would say this is a slower-burn plot, I thought the tensions and suspenseful moments were perfectly placed and had me reading through the night.