Title: The Midnight Club
Author: Christopher Pike
ISBN: 9781665930307
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 224
Source: Review copy from Jonathan Ball Publisher
From the author of The Wicked Heart and The Immortal comes a beautiful and haunting novel about a group of five terminally ill teenagers whose midnight stories become their reality.
Rotterham Home was a hospice for young people—a place where teenagers with terminal illnesses went to die. Nobody who checked in ever checked out. It was a place of pain and sorrow, but also, remarkably, a place of humor and adventure.
Every night at twelve, a group of young guys and girls at the hospice came together to tell stories. They called themselves the Midnight Club, and their stories could be true or false, inspiring or depressing, or somewhere in-between.
One night, in the middle of a particularly scary story, the teenagers make a secret pact with each other, which says, “The first one who dies will do whatever he or she can do to contact us from beyond the grave, to give us proof that there is life after death.”
Then one of them does die…
Official Summary
07 September 2022
This book follows a group of teenagers who are all in a hospice. Every night they meet up and tell stories to each other. They eventually make a pact that when one of them dies, they will try to contact the group.
The book is told in the third person however it heavily centres around Ilonka and her life. Normally I am not the biggest fan of third-person stories but it works well in this book as it is written well and I still know what the character is thinking.
Honestly, the back of the book is very misleading. I thought this book would be a creepy thriller/horror and honestly, it was just a book about a bunch of teens dying and them trying to come to terms with that.
I will say that some of the stories that they told each other were super creepy and graphic. I’m not sure why but the Dana and the Devil story left my stomach in knots. My favourite story was Ilonka’s. I think that was just because we got the most amount of detail about hers and I liked the overall storyline with her and Kevin.
I think what I enjoyed most about this book is although it is about a bunch of sick kids it didn’t fall under the typical sick kids’ tropes and stereotypes. The relationships and friendships in this book were also top-notch.
Overall I recommend this to anyone looking for a short but thrilling book to read.
Also by Christopher Pike
Remember Me
Shari Cooper hadn’t planned on dying, but four floors is a long way to fall. Her friends say she fell but Shari knew she had been murdered. Making a vow to herself to find her killer, Shari spies on her friends, and even enter their dreams. She also comes face-to-face with a nightmare from beyond the grave. The Shadow – a thing more horrible than death itself – is the key to Shari’s death and the only thing that can stop her murderer from murdering again.
About The Author
Author Bio from the Author’s Site
Christopher Pike is the pseudonym of Kevin McFadden. He is a bestselling author of young adult and children’s fiction who specializes in the thriller genre.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
McFadden was born in New York but grew up in California where he stills lives in today. A college drop-out, he did factory work, painted houses and programmed computers before becoming a recognized author. Initially unsuccessful when he set out to write science fiction and adult mystery, it was not until his work caught the attention of an editor who suggested he write a teen thriller that he became a hit. The result was Slumber Party (1985), a book about a group of teenagers who run into bizarre and violent events during a ski weekend. After that he wrote Weekend and Chain Letter. All three books went on to become bestsellers.
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Goodbye…
