This was not good. I was truly bored and zoned out because of that. The narrators sounded like they were doing commentary on a true crime doc. I literally had to ask someone else what exactly the point of this book was. The writing style is good but this could’ve been so much better if it were a novel and explained things more.

Calling all insomniac readers – read this in a single sitting on your next sleepless night!

Read this for:

🐀 a short, eerie grown-up Scooby-Doo-mystery episode dripping with gothic atmosphere
🌙 a group of misfit night shift workers in an old graveyard
🌿 eerie vibes, fungi, rats, grave-digging

Follow these 5 night shift workers who meet regularly for a late-night smoke break in an old graveyard over the course of a single Autumn night.

This morsel of a story is delightfully creepy, full of atmospheric tension, with a touch of dark academia and morally grey characters—plus, weird fungus! As expected, M.L. Rio, known for *If We Were Villains*, brings her signature beautiful writing and compelling character dynamics.

Unfortunately, the short page count meant that the mystery left super underdeveloped and the ending was SO abrupt. I wish this was a couple hundred pages longer!

as a lover of ML Rio’s debut, i was ready to love this one too, and she did not disappoint!! her prose is sharp and concise and vivid, which i adore. rio’s style translated well to novella format, even with a cast of five point of view characters. the mystery kept me hooked, and the creepy vibes were pervasive throughout. all in all a successful and gripping piece.

audiobook specifically: i LOVE that this had a full cast of different voice actors for each point of view. while the character voices were distinct in the writing, having different narrators helped me keep up even better. the overall production quality is great, and i loved ML rio reading the author’s note and playlist at the beginning and end respectively.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2024. Can I say it was disappointing? Not really, it wasn't what I was expecting so the fault lies with me and my expectations, Once past that, I found this to be thoroughly enjoyable if not too short!

I enjoyed the multiple POV's, it was so well done in this audio format and I found myself easily envisioning each character. While I went in with certain expectations, I still enjoyed the story as a whole. Again, I was expecting a dark academia setting within a college setting itself. Once I got into the rhythm of the story, I found myself immersed in the mystery of the graveyard and the newly dug grave - rats and all.

The atmosphere is dark and gloomy and I loved this! The characters - all from different walks of life, brought together at first for a place to smoke and gather in shared insomnia and then by a shared mystery, were exceptionally well drawn out, making this, again, a fantastic audio performance.

My thanks to MacMillan Audio for this gifted ALC

This book demands to be read in one sitting with a warm drink under a blanket. For how short this novella is, I felt so connected to the characters. The ambiguous ending leaves me hoping for a Part 2. Overall very enjoyable.

Graveyard Shift was a quick easy read that got me hooked quickly. I enjoyed the back and forth among the character narrations. I wished it had continued a little longer, but enjoyed the mystery of the novel.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT
M.L. Rio

My first trip on the Rio express and I didn’t want to get off.

Quirky and fun, not two words you’d normally use to describe a horror book, even one as short as GRAVEYARD SHIFT. But it was both of those things and although I don’t think it’ll hit right for everyone, it hit right with me.

It has a handful of characters, all a little strange in their own way. They come together to work the GRAVEYARD SHIFT and soon find themselves in the middle of a mystery.



I decided there was no better place to read GRAVEYARD SHIFT than a graveyard. No way to know what it feels like to walk over a grave than to do it. Although it wasn’t as scary as I would’ve liked it was atmospheric and a delight to experience. The only way to have heightened my experience would have been to read it overnight. But the graveyard I went to closes its gates at night, which is a creepy thought.

I listened to the audiobook, which was fantastic. It allowed me to walk through the graves, acknowledge those who have passed, and play a game of “who has the same birthday as me” with the gravestones. A bit macabre, but it fits right in with the material.

This is my first time reading Rio. I have not had the pleasure of reading IF WE WERE VILLAINS. It is on my long list of backlist titles that I need to prioritize. If you’ve read it, leave me a line in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT Is out now, and ready for consumption!

Thanks to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and Flatiron Books for the advanced copies!

GRAVEYARD SHIFT…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

Quick read/listen with a decent amount packed in to such a short story. The ending was a bit abrupt, but I enjoyed it overall.

I enjoyed this audiobook! I don't know how much I loved the actual plotline, but I definitely liked the mood. Very atmospheric and moody (all of M.L. Rio's work that I've read feels this way, but works so well with this spooky story)! Good.

Okay, Okay, Okay!

First things first, can we talk about how much information was poured into this?

Never mind, let's take a couple steps back.

So basically, we’ve got this crew. They’re weirdos. And I don’t mean that in a harsh way, if that makes sense? They gather at night to smoke and catch up in this local graveyard because it’s just the right distance away from surrounding buildings. Yah know, with the specific smoking rules and such.

They're not really friends? Not really strangers? But they get together to talk every night. To chat.

The five of them are each very different from one another. That’s where the information comes in. You can really tell that Rio put in the time to research different aspects concerning their lives. Which is insane, seeing how there are FIVE of them and they're very different from each other.

Props Rio. I give you major props.

I won’t get into too many details, but one of the characters shares lots of characteristics with a friend of mine who is going into Library Science. It was like I was reading her life, with some extra bits and bobs of course.

Anyways! I really enjoyed the relationships amongst the characters as well as their realistic reactions to the problem at hand. I listened to the Audiobook, but I’ll probably try my hand at reading the physical copy when it releases simply because I feel like I missed some things. I also prefer Reading over Audiobooks, but I was too excited to wait!

I will also note, it was a multicast Audiobook! Not very many people know those exist and they're not super common. When I realized all of the characters were going to get their own voice, I was even more excited! It gives the listener a chance to really get immersed with the story, especially when the voice acting is done well like it was for this Audiobook. Great performance guys!

For now, I’m going to give this Novella a 3.5/5-star rating. I say that because, like I mentioned previously, I feel I’ll probably enjoy it more once I can read it with my own eyes and go back over certain things at my own pace. Not to mention I got lost in the sauce a couple times when it came to certain character’s inner monologues. The unfortunate side to backing up your characters with lots of information: Though it helps build the characters, it can be overwhelming when you have such a large cast and so few pages. Having to squeeze everything into something so small as a Novella and still clean it up for a satisfying ending couldn’t have been easy. If the book had been longer some scenes wouldn’t have felt so info dumpy.

Overall, it was a pleasure to read M.L. Rio’s writing again and I’m so glad to have been given a chance at early access to it.

My thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the free Advanced copy. This Audiobook is expected to be published September 24, 2024.

M.L. Rio is a new author to me, as I did not read her first thriller, If We Were Villains.
In Graveyard Shift, a group of nightshift workers suffering from insomnia meet each night in the college’s ancient cemetery.

A eclectic group of people meet every night sharing their breaks in an old churchyard while working the late shift. One night they notice a new hole that was not there before. They are confused as the gravedigger returns, they decide to follow him and uncover some interesting connections between him and some strange events.

This was a tough read for me. Although it is very short it took me awhile to get through it. I struggled with the slow pace and the lack of tension. I feel like there was so much more of a story here that just needed to be better developed. I liked the idea, the characters but wanted so much more.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review..

"Graveyard Shift" by M. L. Rio is a mystery novella. It's also considered to be a modern gothic story. It is partially set at a graveyard where a group of night owl people often randomly meet. One night, they see a new hole like a grave site, and they're all baffled. Throughout the night, they each get various clues about it.

Self named the Anchorites, they start making friends with each other more than before, thanks to this mystery. Edie is the editor of the school paper. Tuck is squatting in the church. Then there's Theo, the bartender, and Chelsea, the bar waitress. Hannah is an Uber driver. Tamar works at the front desk at a hotel overnight, and she's a librarian.

At the end of the audio, there is a song list to go with the book and then a few cocktail recipes.

This is a full cast audio recording. It is narrated by Jess Nahikian, M. L. Rio, Max Meyers, Si Chen, Susan Dalian, and Tim Campbell.

Characters - 5/5
Writing - 3/5
Plot - 3/5
Pacing - 3/5
Unputdownability - 3/5
Enjoyment - 3/5
Narration - 5/5
Cover - 4/5
Overall - 29/8 = 3 5/8 rounded up to 4 Stars

I kind of liked this novella. It was creepy and interesting. Check this out if you're in the mood.

Thank you to Netgalley, MacMillan Audio, and M.L. Rio for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

I haven’t had time to read this yet — I’m so sorry. I plan to read it when Libby has the audiobook available.

wow thoughts on this one... the writing was superb, I just wish it was longer. and what the heck was that ending! Not the note I wanted an overall good story to end on.

Well I can’t like them all.
Even though this novel checked all of my boxes, the follow through did not.
It’s like bad episode of the old. Fashioned takes from the crypt. Literally…there’s an open grave. Here’s where my biggest issues comes in . I’ve been on college campuses as old as the states they are in. None of them had graveyards attached let alone why are so many people hanging out around an old church in the middle of night?? Other than security patrol, colleges do t have night jobs but whatever. All of these details took me away from what I had hoped would be a cool ”tell around the campfire” kind of story. The narrator deserves to use their voice work on a. Better project. It was the only tolerable part.

This was a delightfully creepy novella centered around a group of people in one night investigating a mystery. The audiobook was fantastic.

I really did not enjoy this. It would have been a DNF had it not been so short. Overall, it felt lifeless, pretentious, and left me with a feeling of “what was the point?”, because of the way it ended so abruptly. I’m not sure what I was supposed to take away from this, except that the author wanted you to know how smart they were. I wish they had taken more time to really develop a story and make this premise fun and original, instead of recycling concepts that are, frankly, overdone at the present moment. Check out The Last of Us or What Moves the Dead instead… they were both worth the time. I hate to say, this was not.

So exciting to have more to read from M. L. Rio. I adored Rio's cast of characters in If We Were Villians, and there is a new group here to delve into. I was fascinated by these characters and I love the idea of a mixed group meeting in a cemetery to smoke every night. And there's also an element of academia with college students and a library. This had some excellent spooky vibes, and I loved the full cast audio (including M. L. Rio reading the author's note and some cocktail recipes at the end!). There are some comparisons to be made with What Moves the Dead, both for the cover and for the presence of fungi-caused horrors. I'm between a 3 and 4 on this one, mostly because I don't think there's that much plot to hold up the story here. I liked spending time with the characters and finding out more about their lives, but the mystery of the gravedigger is kind of an open-and-shut case - and they basically solve it pretty early on in the story, then spend the rest of the book picking it apart, but then the moment where the book ends the outcome doesn't feel fully realized. Since it is shorter / a novella, this book feels like a delicious appetizer, a fun way to get in the spooky mood. I hope M. L. Rio serves us a full meal with their next novel, but I will read whatever they put out!

A somewhat random group of smokers meet in a cemetery for late night cigarettes. They come from different backgrounds, but they’ve bonded in one way or another. One night, they find an empty grave and hypothesize who or what is it for. Until the grave digger returns sending the group on a hunt for why he dumped what he did, and if it has anything to do with the incidents around campus lately.

I love an academia setting, and this one really hit the spot. I enjoyed following the characters through their journey to find the truth. There’s something about a journalism angle in a horror story that I’ve always loved. Think The Ring without any of the travel.

The audio for Graveyard Shift is great. There are multiple narrators for each POV which gives an extra layer of personality. Each narrator adds something to the character that made me feel more connected to the story.

My only complaint is I wish it were a full length nov because WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!? If you’re looking for a spooky season read that’s atmospheric, creepy, and a quick read, add Graveyard Shift to your tbr!