PositiveUSA TodayMany of the deeper questions about Ethan, his relationships and the losses from which he never really moved on will largely go unanswered here. Disappointing, but perhaps realistic as an exploration of trauma ... Middle of the Night is a twisty mystery with a touch of the supernatural, but it’s also about the complexities of friendship, those fleeting but overwhelming feelings from growing up and coming to terms with profound grief.
N. K. Jemisin
RaveUSA TodayEach chapter centers a different character, but Neek’s chapters are the only ones in first person ... This tonal change allows the reader more access to the character, allowing us to know Neek in a way he won’t allow the others to know him. In a way, this second novel is all about deepening our understanding of these characters, who they are, who their boroughs are ... Jemisin, in this book as much as the first, lays bare the racism, sexism, inequities and unfairness of our world, but also uplifts so many cultures and communities. For many passages, you’re either nodding knowingly or learning something new ... Jemisin molds real world events from the past few years with magic and myth into this fantastical page-turner.
Riley Sager
PositiveUSA TodayYou won\'t need high-powered binoculars like the ones Casey uses to see where the story seems to be headed. She\'s hardly the first unreliable narrator consumed with a mystery or the first protagonist whose neighborhood voyeurism may have uncovered a crime...It\'s a familiar psychological thriller structure – until everything changes ... If you thought you knew Sager\'s typical double-twists, and the tropes and trips of the suspense and thriller genre, there\'s a tonal shift three-quarters of the way in that will either feel brilliant – or infuriating. Either reaction leads to a page-turning climax ... But as the narrative takes you back and forth through the past and present, the novel seems to be less about the mystery\'s twists and more about the relationships, the glimpses at the lives lived by these characters, both secret and in the open, and what it all can mean in the end.
Riley Sager
PositiveUSA Today[A] page-turner. The novel satisfies like a summer blockbuster, nearly demands you stay until the final scenes and the lights come up.
Ernest Cline
MixedUSA TodayCline\'s writing style, with frenetic pop culture references of the video games, movies, tech, TV shows and music of yesteryear, remains the same ... It feels more like geekery gatekeeping than a showing off of knowledge and attempts to display diversity in the race and gender identity of the characters rings hollow, almost offensive ... Most glaring is Watts is rather difficult to root for the second time around ... But if this is a redemption story for Watts, it\'s incomplete and unearned. Convenient plot twists are convenient at every step of their quest, and even when Watts must pay for his mistakes, it\'s as if the fast-forward button keeps getting pressed and we skip over the hard bits ... If Ready Player Two were a video game, it would be a side-scroller pushing you forward in the timed action and never really allowing you to explore the map ... 2/4 stars.
Riley Sager
RaveUSA Today... no straightforward novel ... Sager\'s novel is packed with the expected horror-trope-tinged suspense, literary jump-scares and more than one twist, but its best moments are the quiet ones exploring the history of the house, comparing the truths Maggie learns with what her father wrote and coming to terms with what it all means anyway for Maggie and her family ... starts more slowly than Sager\'s previous thrillers, but all the best ghost stories do.
