Interesting plot that is almost a book within a book. Characters are interesting. Surprise ending I did not expect.

I absolutely loved this book!! Thank you net galley and Simon and schuster for allowing me to read this ARC.

Middletide takes place in the Pacific Northwest in the town of Port Orchard not too far from Seattle. I have visited this area twice and fell in love with the beautiful hemlock and fir trees, the water, the people and the mountains that make this part of the country a majesty to behold. This is a story follows Elijah and Nakita. Nakita is a member of an (fictional) indigenous group from the Olympic Peninsula of NW Washington. The author did a beautiful job of incorporating the culture of indigenous people! I loved that this book featured a small town and a reservation that seemed to have a good relationship among the communities! This debut novel will stick with me for a while! I can envision Elijah’s property… the beautiful of Washington state! The storyline was excellent and I could not turn the pages fast enough on my kindle to see how this would end!! If you love suspense, twisted love and throw in a dash of murder mystery- this one is for you! 🤟🏼

A unique and interesting story. Deeply profound in parts, with a mystery at its core, I really enjoyed this read. The characters are so well developed and the small town and neighboring reservation a rich background.

A good debut novel. Elijah Leith returns home after a failed writing career and, after a few dates with the town’s beautiful recently divorced doctor, he is arrested for her murder after her body is found on his property in a scene taken from his failed novel. The author weaves together a tale of characters whose despair and longings dictate their actions. The descriptions of the Pacific Northwest are beautiful.
Chapters jumping through time periods was disjointed at times and interfered with the major plot points. Also, the incongruency in character representations made it difficult to believe unexpected actions.
Recommended for mystery readers.

I loved this slow burn atmospheric novel set in the PNW . It is a hood well paced novel that is well written.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review the book

One of my favorite thrillers of the year so far! This book had everything! A great atmospheric setting, suspense, mystery, loss, and romance. I was glued to the pages from the beginning. I fell in love with the characters and their stories. The character development helped to really connect to them. I sympathized with their struggles and losses and cheered on their personal growth. The setting was so descriptive I could watch this entire story play out in my mind which really added to the reading experience. I had a few theories on what really happened, but all of them were wrong. I can't express how much I enjoyed this book! I will definitely be on the lookout for more from this author. Do yourself a favor and don't miss this one!

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on June 11, 2024.

I had a hard time getting into this mystery but I continued through and was glad that I did. Set on the Pugent Sound (the descriptions are beautiful), the story revolves around the suspicious death by hanging of the town's local doctor. Similar in detail to a novel written years before by one of the main characters (Elijah) the story takes off. Twists and turns lead to a compelling read. Did he do it??? I loved it and I look forward to reading more from this author.

This slow-burn novel is about a mystery. A woman is found dead. Is it a suicide or is it a murder? If it's a murder, who did it? How come the details seem to match a novel that was written a long time ago?

But really, at its heart, it's not about the mystery. Sure there's some of that.

What there's much more of is the story of coming back home, the story of regret and trying to make amends. The story of loss and grief and deep sadness. The story of small towns vs big cities. The story of how we can lose ourselves and how we can find ourselves. And the story of what it means to be believed.

If you come into this story for the mystery, you will not like it. It's a slow slow slow burn. But if you come into it to enjoy the characters, the beautiful setting and the humanity, you will love it.

with gratitude to Atria and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Thank you so much to Atria books for the chance to read and review this book prior to release!

WOW! I was utterly blown away by this debut. I really couldn't think of one negative thing to say even if I tried.

Starting from the outside in, the cover definitely caught my attention and this was definitely a case of judging the book by its cover and I'm so glad I did!

This reading experience was enjoyable from start to finish. I was quickly drawn into the story when within the opening pages of the book a dead body was discovered by two fishermen one morning in the 1990s. By the second chapter, I was taken into an entirely different period of time and introduced to two young lovers in the 1970s. The way the two timelines interlaced together to unfold the story of Elijah Leith, a failed author and a suspect in a murder trial completely captivated me.

This book truly had it all! It was full of romance, mystery, small town gossip, 90s nostalgia, revenge, etc. etc.

This book encapsulates the dictionary definition of a literary thriller, which is: "a book containing elegant prose, thematic richness, and propulsive plots."

Every single character is rich and deep and multi-faceted; I could talk about all of them for hours. I teared up at the end of this book simply because it was honestly that wonderful. I can't give it a higher compliment than that.

You will be hearing about this book A LOT, especially closer towards its publishing date which is June 25th! You're not going to want to miss out on this!

There were a number of things I enjoyed about Middletide, I'm currently on a quest to find novels set in the PNW, and when I saw this I had to request/read, because it immediately fit that bill. The setting was really enjoyable, as was the main POV character Elijah, and so if other readers are looking for moody PNW mysteries, this would definitely be one I would recommend. The other characters were introduced believably and well written. I thoroughly enjoyed the title through the first half of the book, and I think based on that writing I was hoping for more from the ending. The last twenty to thirty percent fell apart for me, because I (ironically?) I didn't really believe that characters would do some of the things they did.

That said, the setting and the first half was strong enough that I can still count it as an enjoyable read overall, and mostly I just wish the final part had worked a little stronger. It may not have helped that I just finished reading Snow Falling on Cedars, which this is not dissimilar to this book in some ways, but the court scenes, the circumstantial evidence, and the trial is far stronger in Cedars.

Great atmosphere, strong main characters, and overall an excellent read for a weekend with a 'dense fog advisory'.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Middletide.

When the body of a small town's doctor is discovered one morning, the clues point to suicide.

Eventually, the investigation leads the officers to suspect homicide, and the only suspect is a local young man who has returned to his childhood home after more than a decade.

First, the writing is beautiful, almost lyrical, but its also too wordy and descriptive.

Second, Elijah Leith isn't a strong character; he's not compelling, interesting, or very forthright. He's kind of a wimp, and dull and it was hard to relate to him, much less care what happens to him.

Third, the mystery isn't very mysterious since readers can figure out whodunit, but it's more of a story of Elijah making peace with his true love and finding his way back to writing again.

Readers who enjoy a narrative filled with description and small town life will really like Middletide.

Engaging and entertaining. A recommended purchase for collections where crime and thrillers are popular.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this debut mystery. When I finished it, I thought, Crouch is gunning for Harlan Coben's audience and she's done a very good job. Like many of Coben's stand alone thrillers, Middletide is, at its dark(ish) heart, a love story. Crouch's prose is more literary than Coben's but she's yet to hit his level of fiendish suspense. That said, Middletide is a worthwhile read.

The book opens on a cold morning in 1994 with two fishermen finding a hanging body on the shores of Puget Sound. The corpse is that of the preternaturally beautiful Erin Landy, the main doctor in the small town of Point Orchards. What looks like a suicide is determined by local sheriff, Jim Godbout, to be a murder, a murder that has far too much in common with a book, written 13 years earlier, by Elijah Leith, a reclusive author on whose land the body swings.

From there, we cut immediately to 1973 where we see Elijah, at 18, pledge his life long love to a Native American girl, Nakita, who lives on the nearby reservation. Then we are in 1977, then 1992, then 1994, then 1992 again--the book zigs back and forth through time, slowly setting out the context of the relationships between Nakita, Elijah, and Erin.

This is a novel that lays its conceits out slowly. Early on, we know that Elijah, despite promising to return to Nakita in 1977, did not. He spent ten years in California, writing Middletide, his first great novel. The novel was a flop due to a single negative review from the ubiquitous Times and Elijah, out of money and ashamed, slunk home in 1992. He began rehabbing the cabin he'd grown up in while earning a living working in his dead father's best friend's--Chitto--garage. He longs to connect again with Nakita who is in mourning for her husband of five years who was killed in a hunting accident. For her part, Erin is still devastated from the loss of her young daughter who was recently killed in a car accident.

Crouch leisurely takes us through Elijah's life in Point Orchards. When he is not learning how to live off his land, he is trying to get Nakita back and, I must confess, for much of the book, his thoughts about her veered towards the borderline obsessive. We spend a lot of time with Elijah, but we also with Erin's and Nakita's as well. We get hints about what their lives look like when the murder occurs but stlll, at the 60% of the mark, I had no idea how the three were, in 1994, connected.

Then, a discovery is made and it is suddenly blindingly clear who killed Erin but only to the reader. The cops are remarkably credulous until they are not and I found their behavior to be frustrating. The last quarter of the novel moves at breakneck speed and the story's resolution is more or less satisfying.

Crouch is a strong writer, especially about the land and her unusual timeline gives the book an intellectual interest the plot doesn't quite match. The characterizations of Nakita and Erin aren't especially nuanced and, though Elijah is clearly limned, I wasn't crazy about him as a person. He's one of those leads that's interesting to read about but not especially endearing.

But I did, overall, enjoy the book. The mystery, for much of the novel, is slippery and the story doesn't feel any need to demonize any of its characters. This is, oddly enough, a feel good story, with a resolution Coben would cheer. I'll definitely be reading whatever Crouch writes next and, if you like unusually plotted literary mysteries, you'll enjoy the time you spend reading Middletide.