Book Review: The Night Shift by Alex Finlay

 SUMMARY:

It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.

Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.

Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words... “Goodnight, pretty girl.”

In the aftermath, three lives intersect the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.

Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Alex Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers.

TEE'S THOUGHTS

I really enjoyed Alex Finlay's last book Every Last Fear, so I was super excited when I was given an early read of his upcoming thriller The Night Shift.

The book slings you right into the action from page one, with not one but two murders. One that happened in 1999 on New Year's Eve at a Blockbuster, where four teenagers are murdered, and the other that happens in now time, 15 years later at an ice cream shop, that is eerily similar to the first one. In both murders, one teenager manages to escape alive. Could the murderer of the Blockbuster murders, be back after jumping bond and disappearing all those years ago? Or could it just be a strange coincidence or copycat murder?

Told through the viewpoint of Ella, the survivor of the Blockbuster murders and now a therapist, Chris, a lawyer, and Keller, the detective on the case. The story bounces back and forth between the present day and the past through flashbacks. The ice cream murders bring the past back to front and center to the entire town and cause emotions to flair for the main characters and several minor ones.

As stated above, the book does pull you in quickly, but it slows down a bit to let you catch your breath and get to know the main characters and their places in the story, but once the second half begins it is a pretty fast and twisting ride that throws you quickly into an ending that I did not see coming.

The characters in the books are flawed, each of them coming into the story with plenty of past trauma. Unusual for me, I happened to like all the main characters in this book. I thought that Finlay did a great job breathing life into them. The only problem I had was with Keller, and it was that she put herself into a lot of harmful situations being 8 months pregnant with twins, but maybe it was just me that found that a little far-fetched.

Finlay's writing was flawless and he knows how to spin a story that makes you feel as if you are watching a True Crime Documentary. The facts are clear, and the situations feel very real.

The Night Shift has certainly shifted Alex Finlay into my very short auto-buy author's list, and I look forward to his next book.