2.5 stars

I loved the premise and idea of this story. It’s what sold me on wanting to read it.
There were times where the story was really good. Especially with Mr Sandman. But there were many times I’d get thrown off by the banter, which would take me off course. I don’t know. I don’t wanna say I’m too old, cause I love reading YA. Between the actual story and conversations between characters, it just didn’t mesh well for me. And unfortunately, that’s where this fell flat for me.

REVIEW

As you may know, I have taken it upon myself to create THE SLASHER LIST, a comprehensive list and review of slasher-inspired novels. I’ve been away from the project for a bit (work, life, personal demons, you know how it is), so I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to pursuing the project.

So when I started reading Your Lonely Nights Are Over, I wanted so much, despite knowing it would make the fall worse if I was disappointed.

I am so happy to say that Your Lonely Nights Are Over was everything I wanted and more. I devoured this book in two sittings.

We’ve got twists, we’ve got turns, we’ve got messy queer characters, and, of course, the most important element of every slasher: buckets of blood.

The death scenes and the tension is brutal. These kids die, man, and Sass doesn’t hold back. There’s a Saw-trap-esque strangulation by barbed wire in the first few chapters.

I will say that if you’re like me and you read and watch a lot of slashers and are familiar with the tropes, the twists might be a bit easy to predict. I knew who the killer was pretty quickly (and the twist about the killer, because I’m familiar with Saw and Scream).

That all said, while I caught the foreshadowing and know the genre a bit too well for my own good, it wasn’t frustrating to wait for the characters to catch up with my realizations. Twists don’t have to be unpredictable to be fun.

This is a YA book. I typically don't like YA (I'm just not the target demographic), but I think that this is one of those YA books that, while definitely for teens, is fun to read as an adult, too. (Especially if you were in a queer club in high school. Because, woof, this book captured that feeling of young queer drama well.)

This book has an important message about queer community that is vital for young queer folk to learn, especially in an era of the internet full of toxic queer spaces. Ultimately, Your Lonely Nights Are Over is a story about friendship, community, and recognizing the danger and toxicity of queer abusers, all wrapped up in a witty, barbed-wire slasher with a breakneck pace.
FINAL THOUGHTS

Your Lonely Nights Are Over is definitely going to be one of the crowning jewels of THE SLASHER LIST, sitting in pride of place beside My Heart is a Chainsaw.

If you loved the Scream movies and want a book with that same smart, meta horror vibe, then you’ll have one hell of a time with Your Lonely Nights are Over.

Thank you to Viking Books for Young Readers for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley! If you are interested in Your Lonely Nights Are Over, it is out now!

If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org.

User-defined content warnings are available via Storygraph.

if you liked: the fear street movies, scream, Bottoms, and Clueless you MUST read this book

i am still very new to the horror genre (i’m a bit of a scaredy cat) but i LOVED this and devoured it in under 24 hours. Sass managed to write a book that is incredibly funny but also discusses serious topics with care. the book also has content warnings at the very beginning in an authors note

i really hope Sass continues writing campy, slasher, queer horror stories because i ALREADY miss reading this book so so much.

Your Lonely Nights Are Over is the perfect combination of horror and humor! We follow best friends Cole and Dearie, who trying to survivor their senior year when a serial killer reappears. As their town is terrorized by Mr. Sandman, Dearie and Cole find themselves at the top of the list of suspects. This book was thrilling and campy, while also tackling some heavier topics.

I was tentatively excited to pick this up as Sass' debut, Surrender Your Sons [ my review here ], was a surprise hit. While their follow up didn't work for me as much as I would have hoped, this at least was a return to a darker story like the debut. As bad as it feels to call a book about queer people being slaughtered by a serial killer, this was a fun time. I didn't quite expect for the novel to go as far as it did, for the murders to start as soon as they did or for the scenes to be as descriptive as some of them wound up being.

Unlike other books I've read I really felt like I was watching a teen horror movie play out as I read through this book. The middle dragged slightly, simply because I am never invested in playing detective. I think it's very admirable that these boys wanted to clear their name and get the person that was setting them up unmasked, but I had a pretty firm idea of who was behind it and was just waiting to see if I was right, so these boys could play detective for as long as they wanted as far as I was concerned.

Speaking of our two POV leads, I loved them. 2023 seems to be the year of me reading queer books with protagonists that break the mold of what I've come to expect from queer representation in this age category, and while I was side eyeing Dearie quite a lot in the end I did really enjoy him and Cole and the way the two of them interacted as well as the way they interacted with the other prominent characters.

This book comes out right in time for the Spooky Season and I think that any October would be thoroughly lacking if this wasn't included.

2.75 stars.

I wanna start of by saying I appreciate receiving this e-arc from NetGalley. I really wanted to like this book, the cover looks great and the blurb sounded great. However the more I started reading the more annoyed and frustrated I got because of the writing. Since this is a YA book, I also felt uncomfortable with how all the different sexual scenes and talk about sex was portrayed. Honestly with a lot of the writing in this book it felt as if an adult tried to sound “hip” and sound like a teenager but failing miserably. A lot of what different characters said and how they acted made me say “what the f” out loud several times. Because no one talks like that, certainly not a teenager. I also think the book was a bit too long, and dragged out. Which leads me to the ending…what was that. Why is everyone so cool and okay with Cole literally killing a guy. Yes, he killed a serial killer but he still killed another human being. How is he not struggling with killing another person, how is everyone else seemingly so okay after witnessing several dead bodies and killings??

Overall I do think the story could have been great, but the writing and story telling was just not it. It made me dislike the book and towards the end I just wanted to be done with the book because I was not having a fun time.

I’ve seen so many mixed reviews on this one so I was a little nervous going in but I loved this! It was a great mix of horror and humor and kept me on the edge of my seat and guessing the entire book! I loved the friendship between Cole & Dearie, I think so many stories focus on solely the romance aspect of love and put friendship on the back burner and this book was very much the opposite of that. Cole & Dearie’s friendship was very much front and center and you could just tell how important they are to each other! I also loved that a huge focus of this story was loneliness and the specific emphasis on queer loneliness and how having other queer people in your life brings a solidarity that gives you a little more closeness with each other! Just thought this was a very solid story and a perfect read for this time of year!

What I liked:
-So many horror references!
-A strong friendship between the two MCs (I’ve been reading quite a bit of books lately with more focus on friendships than romance and I’m loving it)
-The twists. Ok so with this one I was able to guess the big twist pretty early on, BUT I just really enjoyed the way things were revealed.
-The audiobook production. Some chapters are like clips from a tv show and they were fun via audio. Also, I love a book with multiple narrators for multiple POVs.

Not for me:
-Slashers in general are hard for me in book form. They are my favorite types of horror movies but the translation to books just always leaves me wanting more.

I wanted so desperately to like this book. It was on my most anticipated read for 2023. What happened? I think I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that YA just doesn't do it for me anymore. The writing was disjointed. The characters were unlikable and would act in ways that wasn't believable. I wanted to have one connection with one of the main characters. This was a murder mystery, give me a reason to not only want them to survive, but also get satisfaction from finding out who the killer was. I'm sure this book has a target audience that would enjoy it. Unfortunately, it just wasn't me.

#YOURLONELYNIGHTSAREOVER. #NETGALLEY #ADAMSASS

Your lonely nights are over by Adam Sass was my first novel by the author and I wasn't disapaointed by it at all! This was a perfect thriller in my eyes because I read it in the beginning of September and just now doing my review for Penguin Teen! Thank you once again for sending me an e-arc & a finished copy for Your lonely nights are over!
What is this book truly about? Well this follows two main characters both named: Cole & Dearie and we also have a huge cast of queer characters in here and on the pages of the book it tells us what character identify as what. So Cole is Bi and Dearie is gay and Dearie also have two moms so I thought that was pretty cool to see, we need more reperstentaive like that!
As we follow our two main characters we are trying to figure out who and why and what is Mr. Sandman who is the msterious killer in the town killing all of the queer folks, including some of Cole's & Dearie friends that are part of the queer club at their local high school!
This book had so many twist and turns and despite me getting spoiled for a little thing I still didn't saw that twist coming! This was a very fast pace novel because there was short chapters in here and u didn't know what characters to trust or who not to trust. A solid 4/5 stars for this new book by Adam Sass and I'm looking forward to reading more from them!(:

This was my first book by Adam Sass and I can honestly tell you that I am now a big fan of his. I’m looking forward to reading more from him.

This is the story of Frankie Dearie and Cole Cardoso, two best friends who face down a murderer and, in doing so, end up suspects themselves.

“Your Lonely Nights Are Over” is a super fun and entertaining young adult murder mystery. It was a page turner. I was constantly trying to figure out who was the murderer. And while I did eventually guess who was killing everyone, it wasn’t obvious right away. Sass had me following right along with his clues and twists and turns.

Your Lonely Nights Are Over balances terror and Celebration. Fear of this potential serial Killer re-emergence but also grounded in queerness, love, and friendship. In the ways survival and existence is rebellion, how our love and feelings are valid. It's about misconceptions with deadly consequences, abuse, and intrigue.

There's so much to love here like the podcast snippets, the dual POV, and the ways they have to explore their own perceptions and misunderstandings. If you are already in the fall thriller mood and looking for books, this is for you!

I adore Adam Sass as a human and as a writer. I will literally read anything he writes. When I originally applied to be on the Street Team for Your Lonely Nights Are Over, I had planned to be more proactive with promoting it. While life got crazy and I missed some of the 'preorder' period, I'm still here for his books. Throughout our library system, I did make sure we had his books on our shelves. Your Lonely Nights Are Over is a fun campy horror story with friendship at it's heart. Perfect for spooky season. I could easily see it being adapted into a movie and hope it does eventually.

I've read quite a few horrors/thrillers lately and this one is by far my favorite! I was not expecting that with a YA novel, but this was extremely well written, well paced so that I was constantly on edge, a wonderful plot/mystery that did keep me guessing, and I fell in love with the main characters. It was very traditional slasher feel but interwoven I thought there were some big important messages about being queer and being lonely, but they weren't forced in an unnatural way. Adam Sass has definitely made a fan out of me.

Cole and Dearie are as close as two best friends can be, without being boyfriends. A famous serial killer called Mr. Sandman reemerges after years of no killing, and the two are framed for the deaths of their fellow queer club members. In order to clear their names, they decide to figure out who is behind the deaths, and to stop them before more killings happen.

I had so much fun with this one, honestly such a good first book for my October reading! I was flipping between a 4 and a 4.5 rating, but ultimately went for the 4. There was just something missing that I can't quite put my finger on. I adored both Cole and Dearie. They were both really fun characters to read their POVs from. I loved the banter and sass these teens had, and how they weren't afraid to dish it out at any given moment. They were both a bit unlikeable, but I couldn't help but root for them and their friendship. I loved trying to piece together who the murderer was, and did end up figuring it out, but quite close to the reveal so it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book. Also, absolutely ADORED the epilogues.

This is my first Adam Sass book, but if his other books are anything like this I may have to check out more of his writing!

I couldn’t finish this book, left at 57%, only because of excessive school workload. Personally i did love this book’s plot however the main characters were quite annoying. I’m a sucker for thrilling murder novels so i will most definitely be buying it to continue and read further!

Campy & queer horror - what more could you ask for? Your Lonely Nights Are Over is a fun, queer take on the YA Slasher and while I didn't find it particularly scary, I did enjoy the story and characters quite a bit.

A new Netflix special on The Sandman Killer has everyone obsessed - and for some, that obsession may have gone a little too far. While the original Sandman Killer was never found, it appears that he may be back. And he seems to have an apprentice who is hell bent on taking out the local high school queer club. Soon, the bodies are piling up and you're not sure who can be trusted.

I listened to the audiobook for the second half of this book and really enjoyed it. The story was pretty fast-paced and was a quick read. The author has a witty way with words and I would definitely read from them again. While I did guess the first killer reveal, I didn't see the second coming. I thought it was someone else!

If you're looking for a fun, YA Slasher with great queer rep I'd recommend checking out Your Lonely Nights are Over this spooky season.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for the review copy.

I didn’t love this one.
I understand that we’re not meant to love the MCs but I just couldn’t get past it. They were so incredibly annoying.

This is a thriller but it seemed so far fetched. Half the stuff that happened just seemed so unbelievable.

I did love the representation though. Loved having so many queer characters.

I got an ARC of this book.

DNF pretty quickly.

The two MCs were that awful bitchy cis gay that thinks being mean and gay makes you better than everyone around you. Constant judgement, constant being mean to everyone, I just couldn't enjoy anything because of the two narrators. Catty can be fun, but when it is constant and so full of real judgement for everyone, it just makes really obnoxious characters.

If you have more of a tolerance for that, might be worth a shot. I didn't even make it to the real action, because I couldn't stand the narrators.

This was the perfect story for October! The spooky vibes were everything and this definitely lived up to expectations! I absolutely adored this & can not wait to read more stories like this one! I thought the characters were amazing and I loved just how gripping this book truly was. I hope everyone reads this!