{"id":2660,"date":"2024-05-06T14:44:51","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T18:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2024-03-06T14:47:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T19:47:30","slug":"book-review-midnight-on-beacon-street-by-emily-ruth-verona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=2660","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW: MIDNIGHT ON BEACON STREET BY EMILY RUTH VERONA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cover<\/a><\/p>\n

Midnight on Beacon Street\u00a0<\/em>by Emily Ruth Verona<\/p>\n

Harper Perennial, 2024<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9780063330511<\/p>\n

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD<\/p>\n

Buy:\u00a0\u00a0Bookshop.org<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Amazon.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Midnight on Beacon Street\u00a0<\/em>has a fantastic first chapter, Seen through the eyes of six year old Ben, it starts just after midnight, and we immediately know something has gone terribly, violently, wrong. But there\u2019s no clue as to what actually happened, who did it, or who it happened to. Emily Ruth Verona forces us to backtrack to the early evening arrival of Amy, the babysitter, to find out. Ben and Amy, the point-of-view characters, alternate chapters, with overlapping time frames that give us their differing views of the same events. Amy, the protagonist, suffers from anxiety, and we get some background on her own experience with a babysitter who helped her develop a way to cope with it. The back-and-forth on the timeline is a cool storytelling technique, but there\u2019s so much jumping around that it messed with the narrative for me, as I was constantly having to flip around to figure out the linear sequence of events.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1993, and in the suburban community of Chase Hills, there have been a rash of burglaries. Amy shows up for her regular Friday night\u00a0 babysitting job, watching hostile preteen Mira and her younger brother Ben while their mother is out on a date, She is expecting a relatively calm evening of games and stories until the kids go to bed, and then a cuddle with her boyfriend Miles over while they watch\u00a0Halloween<\/em>\u00a0(horror movies are a way for her to deal with her anxiety, although\u00a0Halloween\u00a0<\/em>is an interesting choice to take on a babysitting job).. Miles is not a fan of horror, but their debate over whether to watch it is interrupted when MIles\u2019 obnoxious older brother Patrick, his girlfriend Sadie (Amy\u2019s former babysitter), and Sadie\u2019s sister Tess, who demanded a ride from Miles after their car broke down, push their way in and refuse to leave. It\u2019s creepy, and I was so angry that Miles put her in that situation, even if it wasn\u2019t on purpose. Amy tries to keep them away from her charges, but her anxiety makes it difficult to manage the older teens and also make sure the kids are safe. She finally draws the line, and Patrick, Sadie, and Tess leave in Miles\u2019 car, leaving the two of them together.\u00a0 Amy is so angry that she tells Miles to leave, and because the others have taken his car, she gives him her keys so he can drive her car home.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Mira and Ben are upstairs when the phone rings. They are never supposed to answer the phone when it rings but Ben answers and then Mira hangs the phone up, angry.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s apparently visiting night because a neighbor drops by next to drop off a letter, Then there\u2019s another knock, and Amy(failing to follow basic rules for surviving a horror movie) opens the door to a strange man demanding to see his children. The single mother she\u2019s sitting for has finally been tracked down by her abusive ex-husband, and he wants his kids right away. Amy tries to keep him out and protect Ben, and Mira and Amy together finally threaten him into leaving. It\u2019s a lot scarier of a scene than that description makes it sound.<\/p>\n

With Mira and Ben both safely upstairs again, Amy cleans up from the busy night only to hear a noise from the kitchen. Sadie is in the kitchen carving her initials into the baseball bat Amy threatened the kids\u2019 father with, using a steak knife, believing Amy had left because her car is no longer there.\u00a0 There have been several flashbacks in the book to the time when Sadie was Amy\u2019s \u201ccool big sis\u201d babysitter. Now that Sadie is more of a peer, their past has created an unevenness to their relationship . Sadie admits she is the burglar in the news, but\u00a0 it\u2019s unclear exactly what her purpose is at this point\u2013 whether she\u2019s there to steal something, create some other minor mischief, or do something really awful\u2013, and we never really find out because Ben, who\u2019s supposed to be asleep, comes into the kitchen looking for a glass of milk, and things spin out of control fast.<\/p>\n

Verona has anxiety herself. She waited a long time to be able to write a character with anxiety realistically and with depth, and I think she succeeded with that. Amy does freeze up but she also has some agency and when it comes down to it she acts to protect herself and the kids. I also liked that she expressed her feelings to Miles and he respected her. As much of a pushover as he was for the older kids, his treatment of Amy felt almost too good to be true for an awkward teenage boy.<\/p>\n

This does feel like a book where \u201cthings just happen\u201d:: I can\u2019t imagine all of these seemingly unrelated events occurring in one evening (although they do all end up contributing to the finale) and Sadie\u2019s motives remain a mystery to me. It\u2019s good that Amy had the opportunity to define herself and discover she could handle fear outside a movie screen, but as a parent, I wouldn\u2019t be asking her back to watch my kids. Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Midnight on Beacon Street\u00a0by Emily Ruth Verona Harper Perennial, 2024 ISBN: 9780063330511 Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD Buy:\u00a0\u00a0Bookshop.org\u00a0|\u00a0Amazon.com   Midnight on Beacon Street\u00a0has a fantastic first chapter, Seen through the eyes of six year old Ben, it starts just after midnight, and we immediately know something has gone terribly, violently, wrong. But there\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[337],"tags":[464],"class_list":["post-2660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-emily-ruth-verona"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-GU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}