Book Review: Midnight on Beacon Street | Emily Ruth Verona

If you’re looking for something different than the typical thriller, I recommend giving Midnight on Beacon Street a try! Don’t expect a twist-filled heart-pounding story start-to-finish; this book is a slow-building suspenseful thriller—and love letter to vintage horror movies—in which a teenager must overcome her own anxiety to protect the two children she’s babysitting when strangers come knocking at the door.

About the Book | Midnight on Beacon Street

Characters

Eleanor is the mother. Ben and Mira are Eleanor’s kids (Mira is older). Amy is the babysitter. Miles is Amy’s boyfriend. Sadie is Amy’s babysitter in flashbacks to Amy’s childhood.

October 1993. One night. One house. One dead body.

When single mom Eleanor Mazinski goes out a for a much-needed date night, she leaves her two young children —sweet, innocent six-year-old Ben and precocious, defiant twelve-year-old Mira— in the capable hands of their sitter, Amy. The quiet seventeen-year-old is good at looking after children, despite her anxiety disorder. She also loves movies, especially horror flicks. Amy likes their predictability; it calms the panic that threatens to overwhelm her.

The evening starts out normally enough, with games, pizza, and dancing. But as darkness falls, events in this quaint suburban New Jersey house take a terrifying turn —unexpected visitors at the door, mysterious phone calls, and by midnight, little Ben is in the kitchen standing in a pool of blood, with a dead body at his feet.

In this dazzling debut novel, Emily Ruth Verona moves back and forth in time, ratcheting up suspense and tension on every page. Chock-full of nods to classic horror films of the seventies and eighties, Midnight on Beacon Street is a gripping thriller full of electrifying twists and a heartwarming tale of fear and devotion that explores our terrors and the lengths we’ll go to keep our loved ones safe. (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review | Midnight on Beacon Street

I’ve seen mixed reviews for this book, but I enjoyed it! I found it engaging, tense, and much less campy than I anticipated based on the description. Some readers indicated that they found it too slow. I didn’t find it slow (the book comes in under 200 pages, how slow can it be?). The story is building (as the title implies) towards what occurs at midnight in the house on Beacon Street where Amy is babysitting Ben and Mira. The events of the book take place in the six hours leading up to midnight (and a few flashbacks), as well as the aftermath.

The opening chapter takes place just after midnight and shows Ben standing on the edge of a pool of blood in the dark house, so readers are likely to spend the rest of the book wondering what happened and whose blood it is (understandable). You won’t get that answer until the very end, but I thought the build was in some ways more compelling (or at least, it adds to the ending). My advice? Manage your expectations if you thought this would be straight horror, and allow yourself to appreciate what is happening with the rest of the story—you will get answers in due time!

The narrative structure has chapters from Amy’s and Ben’s perspectives and are timestamped with how many hours before midnight they occur. The chapters largely go in chronological order, though sometimes Ben’s chapters in particular go back and retell his perspective or what happened earlier in the day. A select few of Amy’s chapters occur when she is 11 years-old and has a new babysitter named Sadie who was about the same age Amy is now (in 1993). For most of the book I was most interested in Amy’s POV in present day (1993), though towards the end I appreciated the tidbits we learned from her flashbacks and Ben’s chapters.

Amy is an anxious teenager who suffers from panic attacks. In flashbacks, we see Sadie talking with her about her anxiety and also ways to manage the attacks. Amy particularly likes horror movies because she finds them predictable and that is comforting for her. Ben and Mira are also anxious children—they have something that Ben describes as “the fear”. This part I found sort of confusing, but I think it was a callback to children in horror films often being all-seeing or more aware of an evil presence that adults. Ben believes their house is haunted, and at times Amy can almost believe him.

If any of you have been babysitters, I think this book will appeal to you (especially if you babysat in the 80s or 90s when this book is set and parents were less uptight with babysitters in general). I babysat in high school and I remember that exhilarating but terrifying feeling of being the responsible “adult” in someone else’s home, looking after kids when you’re still a kid yourself.

The way the events unfold across the evening were well-plotted. Amy arrives to babysit, and Eleanor is this cool, beautiful, and funny woman who Amy wishes she could be like. She encourages Amy to invite her boyfriend Miles over (I cannot imagine by the point in time I was babysitting EVER inviting my boyfriend over, especially when the children were still awake! But the 90s were a different era…). A pizza is on the way, and Amy has brought movies with her.

Throughout the evening, strange things happen that increase the tension and suspense. The doorbell rings many times with a nearly exhaustive string of visitors, ranging from the pizza delivery boy to an intimidating figure from the past. Each time the doorbell rang, it spiraled further away from who would be expected. Amy knows the pizza delivery is coming, she’s not surprised when Miles shows up, but then the guests get less welcome and more ominous as the evening goes on.

At a certain point in the book, I felt a jolt of fear when the doorbell rang. I was suspicious of several of the people on the other side of the door, even ones who had a completely benign reason for being there. This was further enhanced by eerie phone calls that Amy receives throughout the evening (though the millennial in me is shocked that Amy continues to answer the door and telephone—I have barricaded myself inside my own house for much less!). Another thing that added to the tension were the stories about a string of break-ins around town, where the perpetrator left disturbing carvings in the home.

If you zoom out from the story, you can see how these elements all add to the theme of scary movies from the 80s and 90s. A babysitter alone in the house. The boyfriend comes by. Other unwelcome guests show up. A creepy neighbor enters the picture. A person from the past makes an appearance. Crank phone calls could be a joke or something much more serious. Ben is certain the house is haunted, and Amy witnesses a few things that seem unexplainable. Someone has been breaking into houses and leaving a signature behind.

As things unfold, Amy drops plenty of tidbits from scary movie franchises. By the end of the book, it’s clear that whether she knows it or not, Amy’s love of scary movies has prepared her to handle this night! Fans of scary movies will also find themselves shouting for Amy to do something different, knowing what is coming. In particular I kept thinking—I don’t care how mad she is at her boyfriend, do not send him away! But of course, Amy doesn’t know what is coming as the clock strikes midnight.

On reflection, this is really a book about anxiety and how it can be a detriment but occasionally a superpower. Amy, Ben, and Mira’s vigilance may just be the thing that saves them on this night (though you’ll have to read to find out!). I loved the tributes to the scary movie genre. In a way, it reminded me of the first Scream film where a character works at a video store and is obsessed with scary movies. He uses his knowledge to help figure out how to survive.

If you take nothing else from this book, don’t answer the door if you don’t know who is on the other side! A fun debut thriller that is a perfect cozy-horror or scary-movie-light book to curl up with!

Thank you to Harper for my copy. Opinions are my own.

Movie Recommendations

There are so many horror films referenced in this book, so if you’re a fan of the genre this is going to make you want to have a scary movie night! For me personally, I think mandatory viewing for this book is Halloween (I mean, it’s about a babysitter after all) and When a Stranger Calls (also about a babysitter and the creepy phone calls definitely reminded me of it. Another one that comes up in this book and has some good source material is Nightmare on Elm Street. For some viewing that came after 1993, I recommend Scream because it’s a scary movie for those who love scary movies!

About the Author | Emily Ruth Verona

Emily Ruth Verona is the author of the novel Midnight on Beacon Street, published by Harper Perennial in January 2024. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and Cinema Studies from the State University of New York at Purchase. In 2014 she won the Pinch Literary Award in Fiction. She is a Bram Stoker Award nominee, a Jane Austen Short Story Award Finalist, and a Luke Bitmead Bursary Finalist. Previous publication credits include fiction and poetry featured in several anthologies as well as magazines such as The Pinch, Lamplight Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Black Telephone Magazine, The Ghastling, and Nightmare Magazine. Her essays/articles have appeared online for Tor, Bookbub, Litro, BUST, and Bloody Women. In 2023, she founded the horror book blog Frightful. She lives in New Jersey with a very small dog.