Genre: Horror Novella
Published: Flatiron Books, September 2024
My Rating: 1/5 stars
“She learned to live in that permanent twilight of sleep-deprivation psychosis. Life, if you could call it that, was a never-ending out-of-body experience.”
There are two types of novella’s that leave you with the feeling of “I wish this had been a full length novel”. 1) Those novella’s that are só good that you wish there simply was more of that world/premise/etc. 2) The novella that simple… didn’t feel finished. Graveyard Shift is a combination of the two, and it’s all the more frustrating for it. In a single sentence: an underdeveloped and unfinished waste of great potential.
What I loved:
Graveyard Shift had all the elements for a perfect (horror-)thriller within its set-up. We open with a captivating image of a group of secret nightsmokers who uncover a newly dug grave in the cemetery that doubles as their designated smoking area. Setting and atmospheric: check. Intriguing mystery: double check.
Each of our five nightsmokers has their own backstory and reasons for resorting to this nighttime-habit, so the foundation for a great cast of layered characters is already set.
Then finally, there’s the writing, which is as good as you remember M.L. Rio being. I love her writing on a sentence-by-sentence basis, but I’m even more of a sucker for the themes she includes. The ugly side of academia, ambition, obsession, (mental-)health and scientific ethics all play a part in this story’s set-up. This could be my favourite book, right?!?
Which is why it pains me to say this:
Please M.L. Rio, take this set-up back to the drawing board and actually write this book! Because what just got published truly felt like a first draft or proof of concept.
What I didn’t love:
I’m not saying this to be mean, but as someone who edits and reviews regularly: this truly felt like a first draft and it baffles me that Flatiron published it in its current form. Let alone dares to charge full price for it. Truly: shame on you guys…
Despite all the amazing potential I described above, none of it goes anywhere. Although each character is introduced with a distinct personality and flaw to set them up for an arc, none of them go anywhere. There is no character-development. If anything, there’s character-regression, where throughout the story, they all blending into a similar state where “smoking cigarettes and being moody” is their only personality trait. Sidenote to all authors: cigarettes are NOT a personality trait.
The plot is severely underbaked, offering no true resolution in the end and hinging on a trope that is already done to death by other authors. Please pick up What Moves the Dead or The Ghost Woods if you want something similar, but better. Worse of all, it actually feels unfinished, ending so abruptly there was a moment where I genuinely questioned if my copy had pages missing.
In short: this had all the right ingredients, but needed at least 2 more hours in the oven before being remotely edible. In it’s current form, it’s a 1-star read, that I truly feel wouldn’t have been published if it had any other name than Rio’s attached to it.
You can find this book here on Goodreads.
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