Reviews with content warning for Dementia - Middle of the Night

It wasn’t bad but it kind of dragged on for longer than necessary, I think if I had actually read the book instead of listening to the audio book I would’ve hated it.
I thought the premise was interesting and usually ‘cozy cul de sac mysteries’ end up digging up a bunch of secrets about other characters and lead to more plot twists but every new piece of background or “secret” we learned were pretty boring but still took up big chunks of time.
It just seemed like a lot of build up for a nothing burger ending
but I did like the characters and the way they interacted with each other seemed genuine

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jessica_leffler's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I read Middle of the Night for book club, and while I normally wouldn’t normally choose to read a thriller, this book kept me enthralled. I did accurately predict at least part of the ending, but there were enough plot twist and surprises to give me whiplash. It also definitely gave me goose bumps, but was wasn’t so scary that I couldn’t read it in the Middle of the Night 😜

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sohare1981's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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emsiemuffin's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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kellpaul's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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_pauline's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

this is going to be a long review; the short version is: perfect, loved it.

this is my 4th riley sager book & he’s already become one of my favourite authors. it might take a little while to get into his books but then I can’t put them down.

I think this had the perfect balance of unpredictability (if that’s a word) & clues/logic - it kept me guessing the entire time, but in hindsight everything made so much sense. I feel like I should’ve seen the signs (like

russ being left out + his anger issues, that billy didn’t scream bc he knew the person - but apart from his parents that could also be one of his friends - or the mention of the second key that was given to the barringers, or how nobody knew where billy’s brother was & whether he’d been informed of the discovery of billy’s bones, and that he could know things that seemingly only billy knew, or how “the barringer boy“ could also mean him & not billy, or what ashley said about the party that day & how she’d find a way to get there + that she was driving at 15 w/o a license - by the end I’d completely forgotten about that; also how the slash in the tent ended up being only indirectly connected to billy’s disappearance, bc who tf would cut open a tent to grab sb instead of simply opening it

). but despite all of that, there were many surprising (to me) twists. pretty much the only thing I predicted was that

henry would disappear at some point

I was also positively surprised that in the end

there was no big supernatural explanation (which I know riley sager has done before & I liked it in

the house across the lake,

+ it did play a role again in the lake/drowning scene at the end, but I kind of wanted the baseballs etc to have a different explanation & they did). I also liked how many people were involved in billy’s death in some way (instead of a simple solution with one villain) & the way the story was told from different perspectives but with one dominant pov/mc

my ranking so far:

middle of the night (5⭐️)
last time i lied (5⭐️)
the house across the lake (4.75⭐️)
lock every door (4.5⭐️)

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boba_nbooks's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager is definitely an average thriller in my eyes. It's not the worst one I've ever read, but it's also not the best.

Thirty years ago, Ethan is having a sleepover in his backyard with his best friend, Billy. But when Ethan wakes up the next morning, Billy is gone, and his body has still never been found all these years later. Now Ethan is back in his childhood home in the seemingly calm suburban cul-de-sac full of normal, boring people. Or so everyone thinks. While living in the house, Ethan sees signs of Billy everywhere and has to wonder whether it's a cruel prank or maybe even something supernatural. Ethan starts to dig into Billy's disappearance and starts to find out that not everything is as it seems and that his neighbors might have more secrets than meets the eye.

This book was truly just fine. I enjoyed the dual timeline and the way the author showed the POV of everyone in the neighborhood at one point or another, and the premise had a lot of potential. However, I think the author had a swing and a miss when it came to the ending.

I know the point of the novel was that even though there was nothing spectacularly tragic that happened at the end, it still felt like a disappointing ending to me after spending so much build-up thinking it was more than that.

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