Midnighters #1

THE SECRET HOUR is a tightly wound story about teens who can access the 25th hour of the day and must fend off the monsters which live there. The plot is engaging, the characters are a complicated mix of likable and morally grey, and the narration perfectly captures the tone and language of teens in the early 2000’s. Unfortunately for my enjoyment of it, the slang in that decade was very ableist, and that language is woven throughout the text at a level too frequent to be an accident, and too frustrating for me to even consider recommending it now.

The perspective switches between the characters who can see the secret hour, but Jessica Day is definitely the main character. Her arrival is what sets off the plot and escalates the creatures’ plans. I like how well thought-out the web of relationships is. The feeling of their interactions fits the history of when the characters met each other, draped with the baggage of their specific circumstances.

There’s a lot of infodumping but it’s justified by having a character who’s the self-appointed master of lore and is eager to share what he knows. The text also knows it’s a lot of info, and even though Jessica, the new girl, got a six-hour cram session, we as the readers get a much more succinct version at points where it was relevant to the plot. I love the thirteen-letter words and all the numerical weapons, ever since I first read this as a teen I've had some of the phrases memorized.

The main plot is pretty simple: new girl moves to town, meets the usual crew, finds out about the outsider, tries not to die, has some fun, then there’s a big dramatic showdown against the creatures. The showdown is genuinely cool, but not very many things actually happened.

I have a lot of fond memories of reading this series as a teen myself, but ultimately it’s too riddled with ableism, both in derogatory slang and its numerous jokes about the idea of mental illness without engaging with the reality of it. I no longer recommend it.

This book isn't terrible or anything, but the biggest problem is it's so milquetoast holy crap.

The premise is interesting -- people born at midnight are able to access an extra hour of every day where they have special powers and ancient creepy crawly evils lurk -- but the characters so uniformly unexceptional and the plot is so weak that you just sort of muddle through waiting and waiting for it to get interesting. Spoiler alert: it never really does.

Of the main characters the only one I didn't find painfully uninteresting was Dess, and even her characterization was pretty trite. Everyone else, despite attempts to make various characters seem ~edgy~, was unbearably bland.

The plot, such as it is, is all build-up with a not especially exciting climax since said climax is itself just build-up for something else. I suppose the intention is to get you to read the other books in the series, but I resent authors (or, usually, publishers) splitting stories without much meat up into smaller chunks just to get more books out of them.

2.5/5 stars.

I MIGHT read the next one someday in the hope that the vague hints that something compelling might ever happen will be borne out. But I certainly won't do it any time soon.