I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Margot's story regarding the Midnight House is a haunting one and drives home the reasons why healing trauma is so important. The ending of the book was slighly predictable but still well written. The plot and writing style are great and I will be reading more by this author.

Obsessed! I was on the edge of my seat turning the page needing more. I was completely captured by the story and drawn in. I was hooked from the first chapter!

This was a great book that kept me keeping the lights on at night. I was definitely scared a few times and had to put it down! I typically read more psychological thrillers and this was more of just a straight thriller/mystery with more gore than I'm used to. I missed some of the character development and twists and turns that usually come with that genre. But overall I really enjoyed the story and the dancer and college references felt very relatable for me.

I can't believe this is a debut novel for Emma Dues! Return to Midnight kept me entertained through the entire book! Margot is one of three survivors of a massacre that took away her closest friends. Even after nearly ten years, Margot has doubts if the right person is in prison for the slaughter of her friends. While working on her book about that night, more secrets are coming to the surface. Will Margot figure it out in time?

Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this book before release!

Margot has returned to to the Midnight House, where she was left a survivor on the night her friends were slaughtered in their shared student housing. Is she telling the truth of what she remembers? Could the real killer still be out there?

"Return to midnight" is a thriller with so many twists and turns that doesn't fail to keep you on the edge of your seat. I've read quite a couple of thrillers so far, but this one is so amazing.

The build up of this story is well done, the characters are written in such an amazing way and I felt like I really knew Margot. Personally I was so invested in this story and I read it in only 2 days, everyone was on my list of suspects, but I never would have guessed what happened. I felt as if I couldn't read fast enough once I entered the last 75% of the book since I was so soaked up in the storyline.

This book is an amazing debut, I love how the timeline changes from past to present and my mind is blown by how everything just unravels. I also like how the different settings of everything are just so creepy and spooky (so don't read this at night lol).

Absolutely looking forward to reading more from Emma Dues!

My 6P review

“You’re still lying, lying so much. Confess before October 23. Ignore this and you’re next.”

Written from Margot’s POV in two timelines, this story follows the life of Margot. She writes about THAT day, nearly 10 years ago, as she is drawn back to the Midnight House. She’s also drawn back to the events of the past, events she isn’t keen to dredge up.

I found Margot annoying. There were so many times she should’ve called police but didn’t. She’s supposed to be a writer and not an investigator. Also, she’s supposed to be 30 in the present day, but she feels more like a teenager.

Julia is a petulant child and a real narcissist. I hated her.

The imprisoned Aaron is calm and not angry. How is this so?

The house was awesome. I felt like I was in the rooms with the characters. I could imagine hear, and feel its creaks and groans.

If Margot was as sleep deprived, and wasn’t eating as the author suggests, there is no way she could function the way she did. The story dragged for a bit, but the ending was great. I thought the author wrote the timelines really well. Both contained a lot of suspense. It was also nice to be set in ballet scene.

This was a really great debut novel

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced readers copy.

This book was so easy for me to fly through. I was hooked from the beginning and felt that way during my entire read. Didn't think I would love that the main character was unreliable, but it made it that much more intriguing to keep reading to find out the truth. I loved the amount of theories that popped up as Margot was trying to narrow down a new suspect. I normally don't read thrillers, but this book has just made me want to branch out and find more to read. I was literally on the last chapter thinking about how well the author had wrapped up the story and left us with no questions left unanswered and then BOOM another plot twist. The dual timelines were also presented so well and it wasn't difficult or confusing to follow along and switch back and forth.
Thank you Emma Dues for creating such an amazing debut novel and thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. 100% recommend that everyone read this!

I loved the premise of this, but wow I did not enjoy it. It didn’t ever capture my interest, and I skimmed the last three quarters just to find out the ending.

This was an interesting take on modern life and how podcasts. Tik tok and tv figure into solving a murder whether it be for good or bad . Overall it was an engaging read

It is hard to believe this is a debut novel. It draws you in right away with 10 year anniversary of Midnight House Massacre coming up. Margot is a writer and now wants to tell her side of what happened the nights her friends were murdered. In order to do that she has to return to the Midnight House.

Remi and Kyle now live in the Midnight House and have agreed to let Margot stay with them. Only one catch she can't talk about the past that happened. Margot starts to get threatening notes asking her to tell the truth or she will be next.

I liked the two different time lines the past leading up to massacre and now of what is currently happening. The house with all the sounds and mystery of what is real and what is inside Margot's head lead to the creepy atmosphere. Some of the suspects were just so bizarre That I wasn't sure who the killer was.

Margot wants to discover the truth even though she puts herself in danger.

I really enjoyed this twisty story and couldn't put the book down until I found out what happened the night five University students were murdered. Some of the story felt a tad slow and repetitive at times like Margot's sleepwalking habits being mentioned frequently. But overall I was hooked throughout.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

This took a little while for me to get into--a bit slow moving at the start--but once it got going, it was really moving! I enjoyed that the setting wasn't what is expected (a small college town in Ohio) and the reveal of who committed the murders was definitely unexpected. A fun thrill of a ride.

I read this book in broad daylight and couldn't shake the feeling someone was watching me.

Return to Midnight is an incredibly eerie debut thriller that had me hooked from the first page and had my heart racing until the last. Dues masterfully alternates between two timelines, both with horrific endings shrouded in mystery, giving just enough information to build the suspense without spoiling the final arc that made me GASP.

Not only did Dues suck me into the Midnight House, but she made me care for each character, flaws and all, to the point that I mourned them whether they deserved it or not. Margot is an unreliable narrator and fits into the arcs of most "final girls", which made this even better for me, but if that's not your cup of tea, you may be frustrated every time she should but doesn't call the police.

An entertaining read, an instant recommendation to any who enjoy thrillers. I'll definitely be picking up any of Dues' future works.

First and foremost ,thank you to the author and publishers for the ARC . I am pleased to have had the opportunity to read and review.

Emma Dues has done a wonderful job with “Return to Midnight”. The story follows a former ballerina as she revisits her former college town and the home where a massacre stole the lives of her closest friends. Unfortunately,her return threatens to bring long buried secrets and the nightmares of the murders bubbling to the surface.

The plot of this book and it's ties with the dance world had my interested peaked from the start. Personally I feel that the first 20% or so is a bit of a slow burn but the pace picks up from there and the details are worth it end the end .The author weaves seamlessly between past and present timelines. At points you may want to shake the characters in frustration but it just adds to the tension. Speaking of tension, this story is a true who dun it and keeps you on your toes til the end. Every time you think you've guessed the truth new information emerges and has you questioning it all again.

Overall, I think this is a great debut novel. The authors style of writing is easy to follow and enjoy. I look forward to seeing more of her work in the future.

Almost ten years ago, Margot was a senior in college, living her best life in a big old house with all her closest friends. And almost ten years ago, Margot survived a massacre in that house in which almost all of those friends were killed. A suspect was caught and convicted, and Margot has tried to move on…though mostly that means barely sleeping, barely eating, and barely leaving her mother’s house. Now, as part of the process of writing a book about that massacre, she’s returning to the house she lived in in college for the first time since the massacre. And things aren’t all as they seem…

I couldn’t tell you why, but I’m a sucker for final-girl-revisits-the-scene books. In this case, the cover drew me in (though ballet turns out to be a minor part of the book), but I would have been interested based on the description anyway. Massacres and final girls and old Victorian houses? Yes please.

The result is mixed. I finished the book late at night, and the end gave me some heart-pounding moments, which I appreciated. The dance element is also nice, in places: Margot and her friends were mostly dance minors at university, meaning that they had skill and interest but generally weren’t planning to make careers out of dance. As a rule, they’re as interested in partying and drinking and carb-based food as they are in putting in practice and perfecting pirouettes. This isn’t a side of dance that I see reflected often in fiction—I’m much more likely to see books in which the characters are desperate make it into a professional company, when in reality the experience Margot and her friends have is much more common.

But I don’t love the voice (first person POV doesn’t help, I think), and Margot’s pretty inconsistent: she goes straight from a reclusive, terrified life to staying at the scene of the crime, telling her secrets to what sounds like a tabloid reporter (bad move for a number of reasons, not least that she’s writing a book about it and should think carefully about what she wants other people to be able to publish before she can), and running around town accusing people of stalking and/or murder. I think I’d have found her more believable if she *had* been able to move on more in the past nine years, or if she were less willing to throw herself back into it. Meanwhile, as we learn more about the side characters, they tend to get more appealing rather than less.

And…I’m not sure how best to say this, but lord have mercy, Margot is dumb as a box of rocks. Absolutely zero sense of self-preservation: in addition to trusting a stranger she knows nothing about (and inviting him over, and falling asleep while he’s there, and giving him free rein in the house), she contaminates evidence, doesn’t think to contact the police about that evidence or about stalking, routinely confronts people she suspects of violence, goes down into the basement without any sort of backup every time she hears a noise there…so many chances for her to end up even more traumatized, to say nothing of very dead.

Finally, this is a book in which a large amount of the plot hinges on Margot not being honest with the reader. There are some major gaps in her knowledge about what happened—we don’t get her memory of the murders until late in the book, but it could have opened the book without significant spoilers—but about other things she is very, very coy with the reader. I understand why it’s done, but it’s not something I much enjoy in thrillers; I like to be on the same page as the narrator (and, you know, to be afraid they’re going to die). For readers who don’t mind this withholding of information, this won’t be a problem, but…mileage may vary.

So—points for premise and the interesting use of ballet, but the characters are hard to connect with and overall it ended being not what I was hoping for from a thriller.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Return to Midnight by debut author E. Dues, published by Thomas & Mercer, is an absolute gripping thriller of it's finest. Heartstopping, goose flesh giving, unputdownable, angsty and full of unexpected twitst and turns that had me guessing til the last page.
Blurb:
On the anniversary of a mass murder, a survivor returns to the scene of the crime―and all its buried secrets―in a twisting novel of suspense.
Nearly ten years ago, five Ohio university students were murdered in an Victorian home. The media dubbed it the Midnight House Massacre. Ever since, survivor and novelist Margot Davis has wanted to forget it, and never again utter the killer’s name. Until she’s compelled to write her side of the story. To do that, she’s returning to Midnight House.
It’ll be a chance for Margot to reconnect with other survivors, heal the trauma, and dispel the ugly conspiracy theories of obsessed true crime fanatics. But when news of Margot’s book gets out, she receives a threatening note that demands she stop lying. Or else. It chills Margot’s blood. Because she hasn’t been telling the whole truth.
As the threats continue, each more sinister than the last, a journalist comes to Margot with new suspicions about that brutal October night. Now, to save her own life, Margot must reveal her well-guarded secrets―ones that, for good reason, she’s been too terrified to share.

I really enjoyed this book. It had just the right amount of thriller, mystery and suspense. I liked the back nd forth storyline settings, and the pace in which we find things out. There are many twists and turns, you never know who or what to trust. Looking forward to reading more from the author in the future.

First of all, a moment for how gorgeous this cover is.

Now, getting into the book itself: I loved the present timeline aspect of it. I was completely absorbed as Margot unraveled the mystery and dealt with almost 10 years of trauma. However, the multiple timelines — in particular, how the ones in the past were out of order — were distracting. I think the story would have been a lot stronger if Margot would have slowly revealed that information in the present timeline, versus the reader hopping around.

Overall, I enjoyed the story, but so many of the plot points felt unresolved or underdeveloped, including Margot's job, her intense relationship with her mother, and the dynamic between the college friends. I don't want to be too specific as to spoil anything, but it was like the author laid the groundwork for many red herrings and clues, but never followed through.

For any true crime fans and fans of thrillers- I would not sleep on this book. The author masterfully created an ominous sense of dread and kept me hooked on every page. I felt like this book was a blend of the recent Idaho University murders and Black Swan. The flashback scenes of what Margot heard the night of the massacre were truly haunting. This book will stay with me for a while and I look forward to reading anything else Emma Dues writes. Thank you to Thomas & Mercer, Netgalley, and Emma Dues for allowing me to read this ARC.