Midnights With You by Clare Osongco was a beautiful look into finding oneself and learning what you need. Narrated from Deedee's perspective, it gives the reader a clear and easy insight into how figuring out one's truths is doubly hard when you've been emotionally abused. Deedee struggles to figure out how to be authentic without being too much/revealing her home reality, but she also wants to know more about her mom's past and family. The characters in the novel are relatable. The story is not fast-paced, but it still grips you and pulls you in, holding you tight until you finish.

Firstly, I’d like to thank Clare Osongco for allowing me to read Midnights With You before being released. I have mixed feelings about this book, there happens to be A LOT of teenage angst in this book and an incredible amount of self loathing. Our FMC was incredibly depressed and our MMC was also depressed. Granted, the self loathing from the FMC is a seed that’s been planted by her emotionally abusive mother and it was so devastatingly sad to read, but guess what, mom was also depressed! Every interaction she has with Jay or anybody for that matter she second guessed and over analyzed. Being a minority myself I understand generational cultural trauma but mom’s character was too much. I don’t want to give too much away but none of the characters in the end were that likable for me. Would I read it again? No. But did I absolutely hate it? Also no.

Wow, wow, wow! Some stories silence me, and this is one of them. Just take a look at that stunning cover! It’s so quiet and, at the same time, so vibrant. Exactly like Deedee and Jay are. I love it when a cover and a story fit so well together.
 
Sometimes, I want to hug bookish main characters badly, and Deedee and Jay are two of them. Deedee tries to be the perfect daughter. She has to follow all of her Filipino mom’s rules (many!), but she thinks she’s bad and longs to be unconditionally loved. Deep inside, she’s screaming for acknowledgment and, most of all, for freedom. Jay is the perfect son, having an almost full-time job to help his mom to pay the bills. But he has buried so much underneath his seeming ease.

This story is raw and messy, about two lonely teens who are stuck in life, never showing to the world who they really want to be, needing each other so much, and maybe even thinking they can fix the other. My chest tightened quite a lot, especially when Deedee got sadder and sadder with all those intrusive thoughts that she’s never good enough. But don’t think this story only has dark sides. It’s a powerful story and, in the end, hopeful too.

Thank you so much, Clare, for sending me an ARC of your book! You’re such a talented author, and after reading this impressive debut, I can’t wait for what you have in store for us next!

Even as an adult, I love a good YA book & Midnights With You is a stellar one! I find myself still thinking about this book & I feel as though this one will stay with me for a while. Full of emotion and very raw. I wish I could read this one again for the first time. If you think you’re too old for YA, you are wrong!!

Thank you NetGalley & Disney Publishing Worldwide for the ARC copy of this book.

Midnights With You literally feels like midnight, that space in time where you find yourself vulnerable and hanging around in a melancholic liminal space. It’s written with a quiet anguish that perfectly encapsulates the rage and sadness of the characters as well as convey such emotions to the reader.

Deedee’s life is closed off, thanks to her emotionally abusive mother. But then she meets Jay, and they find comfort in each other. However, their trauma threatens everything about their relationship with each other, with their families, and with their friends.

Although this is pitched as a romance, this is also a coming-of-age, slice-of-life story. It’s a complex and nuanced book. Diaspora and generational trauma, emotional abuse and how it’s spilled over and manifested in Deedee’s self-worth and other relationships, difficult and seemingly irreparable mother-daughter relationships, the common plight of Asian immigrant kids—all put on plain print with such raw and honest words. It's also realistic how there's a push and pull with all these relationships and realizations. It shows us that healing is not linear at all.

There’s so many lessons to be learned from this book. I often found myself in Deedee’s shoes while reading, and I feel like I just grew up alongside her once I finished this. It had me bursting into tears two pages in. So, so beautiful. It’s “i love you, it’s ruining my life” coded, but they all heal and make better choices in the end. It will make you reflect and contemplate your life.

Safe to say, this ruined me on a personal level and I will now be begging everyone to read this once it comes out.

Thank you so much to Clare Osongco and Netgalley for the ARC :>

I'm still thinking about this book days later. Clare Osongco's story is layered and complex, with characters that feel real as they push through the mess of life to find happiness on the other side. I especially appreciated the nuanced representation of the ripples of trauma that led to Dee's strained relationship with her mother. A stunning debut.

Thank you to Clare Osongco, Netgalley, and the publisher for the e-ARC of Midnights with You!

5/5⭐

It's been a couple weeks since I finished this book and it still hasn't left my mind. One of the best things was how Osongco wrote the mother-daughter dynamic with the main character, Deedee, and her mom. I wanted to give Deedee the biggest hug while also feeling like I WAS her. This story is raw, emotional, heartbreaking, tear-jerking, and healing all in one.

If you're a fan of When We Were Infinite, the people pleaser girl x angry traumatized boi, teens who are hurting and in love, and complicated parent dynamics, you will love this book.

In MIDNIGHTS WITH YOU, we see two struggling teens finding themselves drawn together. Deedee and Jay meet at night where he gives her driving lessons in exchange for her tutoring services. Both have difficult home lives for different reasons and it's painful at times to see them struggle and get in their own ways. This book has big diaspora feelings, teenage angst, and fraught family dynamics, with a tender, aching romance in the center. I highly recommend it.

Thank you NetGalley and Disney Publishing Worldwide for sending this book for review consideration! All opinions are my own.

"Midnights With You" by Clare Osongco (2024) takes the reader on a high-speed chase down a written highway to unravel the secrets that our main character, Deedee, is both running from and been kept from all her life by her mother, a Filipina realtor. Those who prefer to inhale stories instead of slowly chewing on sentences will surely love this engaging book, whose main character is the epitome of the emotionally abused teen we all wish we could go back and hug. In a way, one could argue that this story is that hug. Osongco uses Deedee and a solid cast of secondary characters to drive home positive messages about not accepting emotional abuse no matter the reason and owning up to your own actions as Deedee navigates a burgeoning romance with her neighbor across the street and growing tension with her long-time best friend. Although this level of maturity may feel somewhat inappropriate for the ages of the characters, many children grow up fast and it is still believable given the rising prevalence of therapy in American society.

Fans of Ellen Hopkin’s candid writing and especially those who prefer relatable characters with plenty of time spent on inner thought will surely love this story!

I always loved the time after the world goes to sleep and us night owls get to be our true selves. I loved the love story of these two young teens funding themselves and sharing and overcoming together to become who they are meant to be.

I swooned, I cried, I laughed out loud. I love this book and I wish I could read it for the first time again.

Such an achingly beautiful book that captured the feeling of existing in a hazy in-between place so perfectly. Gorgeous prose, the kind that makes you fall into the character, seeing and experiencing everything through her. DeeDee is familiar, though, a girl I’ve known and sometimes been. I really appreciated how honest, layered, and complicated the familial relationships were for both Dee and Jay as they cycled between isolation and connection, struggling with identity and finding self-worth. A tender, empathetic, and real love story that I adored.

4.5 stars
Thank you to author Clare osongco and NetGalley for the arc.

In my opinion, this book is more of a mental trip. It sends us into the mind of our protagonist Deedee. She’s not the perfect girl, she’s confused most of the time and that’s what I love about her. She’s me or you or your classmate. You can reason with her even if you can’t agree or understand.

Being seventeen is hard. Being seventeen while having an immigrant mother? Harder. Clare did such a good job putting that struggle and dynamic into words. It’s a real struggle and it’s not easy to understand as an individual going through it, leave alone as an outsider. But with Deedee, we could feel it as if it was our own.

Deedee and Jay have an interesting dynamic to say the least. It’s not perfect yet with the way it’s put, we could just see ourselves in the situation. I love the ending as well, I’m usually not a fan of that type of endings but it just felt right with them considering how different readers may feel about their relationship.

devastated me, pulled me into a soft haze of night running and running until the sunrise. i loved how prickly and complex this was allowed to be and how incredibly real it felt, how soft the want for wonder. ya contemporary at its finest.

This book was so incredibly beautiful, filled with gorgeous prose and oozing with honest emotion. The characters all felt so lovable and real, and the relationship at the center of the story was impossible not to root for. Adding in themes of loneliness, yearning, diaspora, complicated family dynamics, and the stories we tell ourselves and others, this is such a special book that I know is going to be important to so many readers! Prepare to feel seen, and also to most definitely cry a little. Osongco is a massive talent!!!

The kindle formatting is broken, so not able to comfortably read. Leaving five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney for the ARC.

thank you to netgalley, the publisher and clare osongco for sending me this e-arc. it in no way affected my review.

deedee is seventeen. she can’t drive, she isn’t allowed to practice photography and her relationship with her mother is worth at least a mitski album or two. her filipino heritage raises a horde of questions that her mother isn’t willing to answer and most days, deedee feels completely alone.

until she meets jay - the new neighbour, the boy who sits on the roof across hers, lets her photograph him and teaches her to drive.

this is the most beautiful story. it’s full of the aching and yearning of your favourite coming-of-age movie, the secret midnight drives, complex family dynamics of southeast asian households and mother-daughter bonds. clare osongco somehow manages to combine everything i love about books, about love and life and family, and condensed it into a novel i cannot wait to have on my shelf (and the cover is gorgeous too??)

i cannot thank clare enough for giving me the privilege of reading this. she’s so wonderful to speak to and i cannot wait for this book to bring her the success she absolutely deserves. it’s without a doubt the best arc i have ever read and i cannot wait for you all to grab a copy 🩷


‘midnights with you’ releases nov 12th !!

This is the most gorgeous, layered, emotionally honest story—Deedee and Jay are less characters and more people who live rent-free in my head at all times! The external plot (learning how to drive and spying on Deedee's secretive mom) is a compelling vehicle for the internal arcs (grappling with feelings about family, love, self-worth, and the diaspora), and Osongco is never heavy-handed, letting her characters be messy and lovable at the same time. And there are so many laugh-out-loud moments through Deedee's wry voice! Watching these characters grow as individuals and as a couple is a moving, healing experience. Osongco is such a talented writer that you'd never guess this was her debut novel—she has a tremendous career ahead of her, and I can't wait for her next story!