Description
In college, Sonia, Byron, Paul, Auraleigh, and Jennet had been a tight knit pack of friends with a shared love of writing that drew them to the school literary magazine, the Dove-Cat. What separated and haunted them for twenty-five years is the premise of Margot Harrison’s The Midnight Club.
Told in a non-linear way across multiple points of view, this novel attempts to capture what it can feel like when you revisit your past. As Sonia, Byron, Paul, and Auralegih meet in Vermont to discuss what caused Jennet’s death on a fateful night two and a half decades prior, other secrets start to emerge. Some of them were more involved than it seemed, both in her death and with each other, and learning those truths threatens to tear their friendships apart as well as the lives they’ve built after college.
At the heart of the novel, though, is also a serious sub-plot related to an ominous drug that seems to let users see their future, or perhaps their past. This is where the novel falls a bit apart; the story of the friends and the loss of Jennet is compelling enough. There is no need for this supernatural and gimmicky insert. However, the characters are well rendered and the story engaging if you’re looking for a bit of a whodunnit.