Midnight On Beacon Street

The setting is 1993 on a fall night in October. There’s one house, a teenage babysitter, a brother and sister and a dead body. Eleanor Mazinski is a single mom on a much needed date night. She leaves her son Ben whose 6 and daughter Mira whose 12, with 17 year old Amy. Amy loves looking after children and is quite good at it despite her anxiety.  Amy also enjoys horror movies. The evening is normal enough with pizza, games and dancing. Amy never anticipates the night becoming an actual horror movie when there were visitors at the door, mysterious phone calls & a dead body at Ben’s feet. Will these three survive the night?

Setting & Characters

I love that the setting takes place in New Jersey and it’s on an October night in 1993I can picture the night and suburb area being described since I’ve been to New Jersey many times.  I love that Are You Afraid Of The Dark was mentioned although I was born in 1992 from the mid to late 90s to early 2000s when I was a little girl I remember watching the show and getting scared. I also do like Amy a character as she’s a movie buff who enjoys horror especially. This is something Amy and I have in common. Ben was your typical curious little brother & Mira was your typical bratty preteen they were the clichéd kids.

Plot & Story

While Murder On Beacon Street doesn’t come out till January 30^th 2024, I received an early copy in the mail. I was very happy about it too as the plot about a babysitter and the kids she’s charged to babysit get stuck in a horror movie of their own. I like the backstory of Amy when she was a child herself and the story about the kids’s dad; I do think the book unfortunately had problems. While I like when a book can go from the past and the present it wasn’t executed very well and I felt that the pacing was off too. The story took a little bit to get interesting and the climax seemed rushed which was a shame. It also felt as though the book didn’t know who the target audience was for it. Was it for adults or for children?

Overall

Overall the story had potential but it missed the mark for me. For a short book I was counting the pages to see when it would end. Midnight On Beacon Street will be available in January 30th 2024. While Midnight On Beacon Street missed the mark I’m not giving up on Emily Ruth Verona’s future novels just yet.