Review: The Back Door of Midnight by Elizabeth Chandler

Author: Elizabeth Chandler

Pages: 299

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Genre: YA Thriller

Reading Level: 13 years old+

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Psychic...or psychotic?

Anna knows her family is crazy. But when she goes to visit her aunt and uncle for the summer and learns that her uncle’s charred body has been found, her life reaches a new level of insanity. Her erratic aunt’s “psychic” abilities are exaggerated by her grief, and have become borderline violent. Alone in an unfamiliar town, Anna struggles to pick up the pieces and establish any sense of normalcy. She desperately wants to trust Zack, the cute boy next door, but even he might know more about the incident than he is letting on.

But when Anna starts feeling an inexplicable pull to the site of her uncle’s murder, she begins to believe that her family’s supernatural gifts are real after all. Torn between loyalty and suspicion, Anna is certain of only one thing: she must discover who killed her uncle or she could be next...

I’ve read a majority of Elizabeth Chandler’s work, and I truly love her writing style and her characters. So I was very, very excited to read this installment in the Dark Secrets series. But to be honest, it wasn’t anything extraordinary. I feel as though it was a rehash of the previous Dark Secrets novels. I knew who the killer was long before it was revealed, and that ruined the ending of the story for me. 

Elizabeth Chandler still has her distinct writing style,  and her unique way of building characters and setting up a plot. But The Back Door of Midnight fell flat for me. There were some plot twists that I didn’t see coming, and those took me quite by surprise, though.

If you’ve read the first few books in the Dark Secrets series, then I do recommend reading The Back Door of Midnight. It’s not a bad book by any means, just a little predictable. I give this novel 3.5 out of 5 stars.