Book Review: The Night it Ended | Katie Garner

This book took a direction I did not expect! The Night it Ended has a gothic feel and an unsettling tone as a psychiatrist travels to a secluded girls’ boarding school over the holiday break to help find out more about a mysterious student death.

Structure and Setting

Set in a secluded boarding school for troubled teenage girls, the events in the book take place over winter holidays when the grounds in upstate New York are covered in snow and darkness falls early. The school is mostly empty following fall term, with only a few students and staff on the premises.

The story is narrated by psychiatrist Dr. Madeline Pine. Interspersed between chapters in the current timeline are recorded interviews with an unnamed woman. Names are redacted, but the woman is telling the story of a disturbing series of events that lead to a horrific night. We aren’t sure exactly who this woman is or what happened until much later in the book, though readers will have plenty of theories.

Plot Overview

Psychiatrist Dr. Madeline Pine is called to help investigate the death of a student at a boarding school for troubled girls in upstate New York. Despite her trepidation, Madeline agrees to go in part because she thinks of her own teenage daughter and wants to help the girl’s mother find closure.

Charlotte “Charley” Ridley was a student at Shadow Hunt Hall when she is found dead at the bottom of an icy ravine. Charley’s mother doesn’t believe it was an accident, though. She thinks that this was a murder and she wants to understand who did it and why. She contracts PI Matthew Reyes to investigate who requests the consultation from Madeline based on her book specializing in female violence and because a recent case of hers involved a victim around the same age as Charley.

When Madeline arrives at the school, she finds very few students and a skeleton crew working at the secluded campus over holiday break. Madeline interviews the four students who are present over break and as she works to gain their trust, Madeline seems to be suffering with anxiety of her own.

Meanwhile, interview transcripts with names and identifying information redacted are interspersed between the evolving mystery. The interview is from a year ago, and details a woman sharing the story of her affair and the consequences of it on her family to a neutral interviewer.

Overall Thoughts

I loved the setting for the book so initially I was really interested. Then through about the first half I struggled to get my bearings. By the end it delivers some pretty good twists, despite a few plot holes. There were layers of mystery going on in this book. The story focuses more on what is happening with Madeline and her investigation rather than on the story of the victim. In fact, I had to go back and look up some details about that case because a lot of it slipped my mind. The teenage girls are not well-developed characters, though I don’t think they needed to be because they are there to provide context to the mystery and not to carry the plot themselves.

The book follows two mysteries—the first is obviously what happened to Charley and it is full of shady characters at the school. The second is what is going on with the interviews from a case a year ago and how they relate to what may or may not be happening in the current investigation. I actually was more interested in that mystery by the end and I also felt like the suspense from those interviews added a lot to the plot.

Madeline instantly reveals herself to be an unexpected character. She seems damaged and we learn she had a really tough case the year before. She has a complicated relationship with her daughter that she reflects on frequently as she interviews the girls at the school and looks into what happened to Charley. She frequently sees commonalities between the students and her own daughter, and we learn a lot about her as she progresses.

It’s clear instantly that Madeline is not in the right headspace to take on this case. She is nervous interviewing the students. She frequently puts herself in unsafe situations. As strange things happen to her, she questions her own sanity. She is also committed to the investigation long past when she probably should have left.

I found the book was a bit too long and the story could have been tightened up. The pacing is inconsistent, which I think results in the reader being much more interested in one thread than the other. However, the ending of the book delivers compelling twists and ties things up in an unexpected way. The ending brought my opinion up and I look forward to more from this author. Knowing this is a debut and that the story was well-crafted, the details around the length and pacing can easily be addressed as needed in future books.

The Ending

Open the dropdown below to hear a bit more of my thoughts on the ending. This section includes spoilers for The Night it Ended so I recommend not opening until you have read the book! The ending has two parts, the ending to the mystery of what happens to Charley, and in my opinion the more interesting part which is what is going on with Madeline and the mystery interviews we are hearing. I’ve separated them into two threads.