Is there a day in your childhood that sticks out in your mind like it happened only yesterday? 

 

For the Finch sisters, it’s the day a boy in town showed them an abandoned house that had a seemingly endless amount of doors and three specific keys, one for each sister. That day changed all three of them, leaving a sort of stain on their souls they were never able to cleanse or forget about. Then, one night, the youngest of the three sisters hangs herself inside the house, an event which opens up old emotional wounds and wakes up memories long since laid to rest. The darkness that claimed one sister permeates all three of them, and now it’s up to the two that remain to keep one another safe and find out what really happened to their little sister. 

 

I felt the same way about Through the Midnight Door as I did about Monroe’s last book, Graveyard of Lost Children: Everything about this book is fantastic except for a single plot point that somehow is just sticking in my craw. Can I tell you what it is? No. That’d be a huge spoiler. All I can tell you is that when this plot point was revealed I felt like a rapidly deflated balloon. That’s how disappointed I was. It’s the kind of disappointment that makes me feel like an author didn’t have the gumption to take a subject or a point to a certain level, to really go for it and write something large. (To be clear, I’m not saying that was Monroe’s intention at all.) 

 

Monroe has done a spectacular job at weaving characterization, worldbuilding, plot, and story in this book. To understand the characters of this book you have to understand the world they grew up in and currently live in, which is a post-2000 American Rust Belt. During the 2000’s, the Rust Belt saw a drop in employment of around 35%, which was over a million jobs. This drop was due to companies in the area not growing along with their rivals in industry and the amount of jobs that were being moved overseas. An unfettered and unchecked pharmaceutical industry was also far too willing to dole out prescription painkillers to white men and women, who sometimes became addicted and then also became dealers and users of other drugs. 

 

Industry towns in the Rust Belt used to be ripe with Boomers working at the plants and sending their Gen X and Millenial kids to university in the large cities, but as the years went on it became harder and harder for parents to send their children anywhere or for children to leave. This is how the family circle of the Finches works and how it informs both the characters and the story. Dad works at a plant, but work has been getting scarcer over the years. Mom has always stayed at home. Their daughters had run kind of wild when they were smaller, but they were as happy as they could be when they knew their parents were struggling to make ends meet. But then there was the boy, and the abandoned house that was somehow creepier than all the other abandoned property around town, and then nothing was ever the same between the three of them. 

 

Poverty, mental illness, child welfare, substance abuse, crime, suicide, strained relationships, secrets, family trauma, gun violence, small town gossip, personal demons, things you wish you could forget, and more are all themes that intertwined at the heart of this book. If you like a book that can bring all of that home tied in a bow, you’re going to like this book. 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by Netgalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

 

File Under: Ghost Fiction/Horror/Psychological Thriller/Supernatural Horror/Suspense Thriller