The concept of this book was super interesting and the writing is fluid, easy to digest. I sometimes felt like there were too many characters and most were unneeded aside from having multiple people with motives.

This was a fun story! A bit of a slow burn, which is usually not my thing, but the author did a great job of keeping the mystery just ahead of the page so it kept my interest! What a great concept. College friends reunite to try to revisit the past and solve a mystery around a shared tragedy. I didn’t see the twist at the end coming!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.
Unfortunately, I could not get into this book. It was all over the place and characters seemed superficial. I was here for the dark academia meets Atlas Six meets time travel vibes but had to DNF.

This book wormed (sogged?) its way into my dreams. No, really! Over the course of the days I read it, I kept dreaming that I was asleep but I was also standing next to my sleeping body, watching it.

Partly fantastical, partly mysterious, wholly suspenseful, I had a blast with this novel. Naturally, I loved that it takes place in Vermont.

The story is straightforward, in a circuitous kind of way. Back and forth-ing in time. What was? What is? So many questions. So many gaps in information. She's a skilled puppet master, Harrison is.

And a skilled verbologist as well (yeah: I made up a new word).

This passage, in particular, reverberated inside me like a cannonball:

"Being young is like being on drugs. The sky is bigger and the sunsets are redder and every new outfit you buy is gonna change your life. Every new friend you make is going to be your friend forever. Time is so deep you could drown in an afternoon."

Lots to think about in this story. Lots to love about the setting, the characters, and the big mystery at the center of it all.

A darn good read.

So far fetched and boring i couldn’t even finish it. None of the characters were likeable and the premise was just bizarre and not fun.

This was such an amazingly unique experience! I love books that make me question deeper, think harder and notice my surroundings more. This was very engaging until the very end!

A time travel novel that will keep you hooked! A drug that allows you to hack into memories of your life? Yes, please! This was an easy, fun read! We have mystery, time travel,

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC. I loved the concept, it's a bit different from what I usually read but also familiar. I enjoyed reading the book, the prose was pretty and the mystery intriguing.

Thanks to NetGalley & Harlequin Trade Publishing for the e-ARC!

**3 stars** One of my favorite book genres happens to be dark academia so I was SUPER excited to receive an arc for this one. Though it didn’t turn out to be my most loved DA novel, this was still a solid read.

Told in two POVs, we follow two estranged friends, Sonia and Byron who were part of a literary magazine. 25 years after the death of their close friend Jennet, they receive a letter from another member, Auraleigh, inviting them to a reunion at her B&B. Sonia and Byron reunite with a few more estranged friends only to discover Auraleigh has an ulterior motive–to solve the mysterious death of Jennet. She hosts sessions involving a psychedelic that puts them to sleep and allows them to relive the past. Complications arise, secrets are revealed, and we readers are constantly questioning the events of that tragic night.

What I loved about this story is the focus on the delicate nature of time. It really makes you question whether you’d want to revisit your past. It’s deeper than solving a mystery and Margot Harrison really captures this well. The idea of bringing psychedelics and time travel into this was genius. Harrison also includes a series of questions at the end that made me contemplate what I would do if I was able to travel back in time.

It did take me a while to get into but once the story really got into the time travel sessions, it got really interesting. Even though the story is told in alternating timelines, I did find the character’s personalities were almost identical to their past selves which I found off-putting at times because it doesn’t show they grew in age or maturity. The similar character portrayal across timelines sometimes made it difficult to distinguish which timeline I was reading upon picking the book back up.

Overall, was I satisfied with the ending? Yes but no. I understand why it ended that way but I couldn’t help but feel unsure whether I liked the way things ended. I do think this is a great read and it included many elements that define a great dark academia book.

If you had the chance to go back in time and see how your friend truly died or had the chance to save her would you? This is the question a group of friends ask themselves 30 years after one of them dies. Dual timeline between 1989 and 2014. A drug allows them to see the future when they are young and see the past when they are old.

3 stars

The premise here is great, but it needs a lot more character work. It’s hard to relate to these characters and it seems that they can’t even relate to each other.
The plot is good, but needs a bit more tightening up. Make me want to keep reading and turning the page, give me someone to hate and someone to root for.

This book gave me Clue vibes. It was definitely a "who done it" type of book. I enjoyed it very much! The ending was a little predictable towards the end but I still was shocked once I figured it out. Overall an amazing book! Now I need to go read some more of Margot Harrison's books!

This novel is quite an interesting transformation of the Dark Academia sub genre. Set primarily decades after the unresolved death of their friend, Jennet on their college campus, the four living members of a friend group called “The Midnight Club” are forced to reckon with their past. What makes this book truly intriguing is the structure of the novel. The flashback scenes to when the group was attending college are broken up into “voluntary” and “involuntary” memories. This structure humanizes the trauma experienced by the characters in an unprecedented way. I personally loved the scenes where the characters discussed writing and books. (There is one specific moment when the characters discuss the work of Proust that really elevated the story). These moments of clear dialogue on cultural influences enhanced the sense of reality of these characters. I do feel like the beginning and ending felt disjointed which gave the overall story a lack of cohesion. This disjointed aspect leads into my difficult with this novel: the overall pacing. I feel that it took a very long time for the book to pick up the story, which made the reading experience feel quite long.

I keep finding myself pulled toward dark academia books since they're all the rage at the moment, but haven't found one that sticks. I've read that the authors make these characters esoteric and pretentious for a reason, but to me that makes the book unreadable! I really wanted to love this one, but there was little going on that made me want to spend my time reading it.

Oh boy... this book made me feel feelings. The struggle with the "what might have been" each of these characters went through felt real and tangible. I loved the concept of "the memory drug", and while I would have loved for it to have been fleshed out a little more, I felt like it worked for this story. This story was about grief, and man did it hit.

These characters embodied the tension of a group of people, once close, split apart by tragedy. That reunion vibe of seeing people you were once close to, with whom you spent some of your most formative years, but have moved on from.

Nostalgia, retrophilia, regret, grief, loss... with a nice mystery whodunnit plot.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

I found the Midnight Club to be highly entertaining, original and a fun read! This unique time travel novel is about a group of college friends who meet as adults and try to figure out how a friend died by ingesting a substance that takes their mind back in time to relive those moments before their friend’s death.

I really enjoyed this book. I found the story to be engaging, the characters were well fleshed out, and the time travel elements quite imaginative. It was a quick read because it was so engrossing, and I was fully invested in finding out who was responsible for their friends death.

Thank you to the publisher, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and NetGalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Midnight Club is like a forgotten melody—a haunting tune that resurfaces unexpectedly. Margot Harrison’s prose wraps around you, pulling you into the shadows of our shared past. The Midnight Club isn’t just a book; it’s a séance. It beckons you to revisit your own midnight moments, the choices that shaped your life. As I turned the final page, I wondered: What would I do differently if I could relive that fateful night? The Midnight Club lingers, like the scent of pine needles after rain. It’s a whispered confession, a stolen kiss, and a promise unfulfilled. Dive in, my friend, and let the past envelop you. 🌌📖✨

3.5 stars

The Midnight Club by Margot Harrison has such a cool premise - there’s a new psychedelic that has been discovered by college students in Vermont. This drug has the ability to show anyone under 30 visions of their future selves — while offering forgotten memories of the past to those over 30. Nostalgia is unreliable - we are always wishing for the past even when we are in the present thinking about how this current moment will one day be distant memory. Our physical bodies have already lived through our entire lives but our minds are catching up.

The execution of this sci-fi mystery didn’t deliver what I was hoping for. A group of college students came together to create a literary magazine in the 80s — one of them dies and in the year 2014 they meet up to take the psychedelic drug once more to try to better understand what happened to their friend. Murder? Suicide?

I do enjoy stories that allow for multiple POVs, I appreciate being able to understand what each individual character is going through and their perspective on the big picture. Unfortunately, the character development through this piece makes it challenging to really connect with any one character deeply. I found myself most drawn to Sonia and Byron.

Thank you so much to Harlequin Trade and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback. If you are a fan of psychedelic experiences, the multiverse, alternative realities, time travel and solving a mystery with a group of friends then give this book a try when it is released on September 24, 2024.

DNF at 35%. I really thought this story had so much promise based upon the synopsis. You can’t take a substance when you’re young and see your future, or when you’re old and see your past? Sounds like tea and heartache, sign me up. Oh we’re going to use this to solve what happened to our friend the night she died? I love time jumping detectives! Unfortunately, with these kinds of stories, you need to understand and be invested in the characters. Even at 35% I don’t think any of these people have ever actually been around one another, let alone spent any significant amount of time developing friendships.

2.5/5 ⭐️
This was an interesting book to say the least, but it was very different from what I was expecting. I thought this was a thriller but it is more of a sci fi and magic type of book.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6427956509