Book Review: Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles

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“Should I find a patch of grass and lie down so the moss can grow over my body, the leaves can be my blanket? Or maybe I’ll sprout mushrooms and a new little hall will grow here from what’s left of me. A new little house for a new little wife.”

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In England, 1840, orphan Orabella Mumthrope, daughter of a Black woman and white man, resides with her callous aunt and uncle, who begrudgingly care for her to maintain their social standing. An outsider with no connections or funds, she lives a tense, precarious, and lonely existence until Elias Blakersby, kind though shabbily dressed and claiming familial wealth, confesses his desire to marry her, offering an alluring, assurance-filled arrangement that erases her uncle’s debts.

Following their hasty, fanfareless wedding, the couple travel to Korringhill Manor, a filthy, foreboding, decaying, labyrinthine mansion riddled with darkness, rot, secrets, oddities, terse relatives, and nervous servants. Orabella is forbidden from venturing anywhere unattended, locked inside her room each night, and feels tired, dizzy, and confused constantly. She loses time, wakes to horrific screams, discovers mysterious bruises, and experiences horrible nightmares. Can she uncover whatever Elias and his family are hiding before it’s too late, and can she trust anyone, or is she losing her mind?

Midnight Rooms reads like a hazy, drug-induced fever dream, pulling the reader along on Orabella’s bizarre and frightening journey. The line between fantasy and reality is blurry at best, the writing captivating and storyline immersive, weaving a mesmeric web of confusion, risk, lust, and madness. The gothic aspects are incredible, the atmosphere sumptuous and ruinously decadent, deranged, uncanny, disquieting, and utterly wrong, while the narrative oozes eroticism, mystery, peril, and malice.

It’s a taut, chilling, creeping, terrifying, horrifying reading experience surrounding use, abuse, doubt, and lies; men, beasts, monsters, and fae; murder, evil, gaslighting, and perversion; racism, sexism, classism, and shadows; and paranoia, guilt, kinship, and ghosts. A sweeping, eerie, spectral, strange, and genre-melding dark fairy tale with supernatural undertones that would make for fascinating book club discussions, as questions and ambiguities abound. This is a must-read for Victorian gothic enthusiasts and those seeking a twisty, intense, and haunting read.

🖤Amanda

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