Hello Beautiful People! Welcome back to another review! For this review, I get into a chilling and terribly interesting mystery thriller The Night Shift by Alex Finlay. If you’ve ever checked out Final Girls by Riley Sager before and enjoyed it you would definitely love this one, they have very similar vibes. I personally loved Final Girls, and it’s hard to say which one I liked better, they are both fantastic books. I think the characters in Final Girls may be a touch more dynamic than they were in this book, but honestly, it’s hard to compare because they are both great reads. So let’s get into the review!
*Some warnings for future readers*
- Includes murder
- Includes inappropriate relationships between teens and adults
Main Characters:
- Ella: The lone survivor of the 1999 New Year’s Eve Block Buster massacre when her co-workers are all murdered in a brutal slaying, becomes a child survivor support as an adult and gets pulled into a situation that is eerily similar to those in the past
- Chris: His brother Victor is accused of the 1999 mass murder, but is never prosecuted when he disappears out on bail, now an adult is a defence lawyer and is pulled into the same situation as Ella
- Jesse: A young teen in the foster care system when she is the lone survivor of a mass murder in which her classmates are all killed at their ice cream store job when she is there one day, she meets Ella when she comes to the hospital to support her
- Sarah Keller: FBI Agent who is brought in to look at the ice cream store murders
My Review
I love a good fast-paced mystery with enjoyable characters, and an interesting plot, and The Night Shift by Alex Finlay is definitely one of them. The book is shown through the perspectives of Ella and Chris in the past and present, and Sarah in the present. While sometimes this many perspectives can be a lot I found Alex flowed the timelines together really well and I didn’t find the transitions from perspectives choppy at all.
I gave The Night Shift an 8.5/10 rating. I found the mystery to be really interesting and had a totally different idea of how the book would end. It’s an interesting book as well because there isn’t just one mystery to solve there are two. Ella is an expert in her field as a support for young victims, more than others ever could be. One New Year’s eve 1999 during the Y2K craze, Ella is a teen working at the local Block Buster. What she and her co-workers would not suspect is that someone would come in and murder the group for seemingly no reason. Ella who was gravely injured in the attack is the only one to survive. Despite Ella being a support for young victims, it becomes clear early on in the book that she does not deal with her trauma in a healthy way. But that’s often how it is isn’t it? We give the advice to others that we refuse to take. A lot of Ella’s inability to move on from the tragedy, and continuing to let it drag her down, revolves heavily around the fact that no one has ever been prosecuted for the crime. A young man was charged with the crime but during the investigation disappeared to never be seen again. When Ella is requested to come in and help Jesse, she doesn’t realize how getting involved with a girl who has gone through a similar tragedy as her could get messy.
I thought Ella was a very real and raw character and I liked her a lot in the book despite her very apparent downfalls as well. Ella despite her good qualities is a habitual self-destructor. She will go to no lengths to see her life crumble and then will go out and just do it again. It’s definitely a form of self-harm if you ask me. Even though she wasn’t exactly close with her co-workers their deaths changed her life forever, and even all these years later she hasn’t been able to move on. I enjoyed that Ella didn’t exactly try to make it seem like she had it all together. I think to a degree she did, but there were multiple times when she would show up in places a bit of a mess and just sort of embraced it. She knows she struggling and while she definitely does some bad things to cover up the way she is feeling she doesn’t deny that she has issues. It was interesting to see her compared to Chris whose life was equally just as shit as Ella’s but he managed to make it into something a bit more. Chris was super interesting because having grown up in an abusive household, he never would have expected as a child for his oldest brother Victor to be arrested for the Block Buster murders. When his brother is arrested and disappears his family falls apart and he is sent into the foster care system. As he admits in the book he was one of the lucky few who ended up with a kind loving couple who would eventually adopt him even though he was older. They gave him all opportunities allowing him to become a public defense attorney. When he is assigned to work for the accused for the ice cream shop killings he is forced to defend a person who committed a crime very similar to the one his brother committed.
Despite there being two mysteries and many characters, the book doesn’t get confusing at all, and the way everything connects is quite clever. I really struggled to put this book down once I started because as soon as the pieces started to come together I was dying to find out what happened next. I did kind of feel that the ending was a bit rushed and honestly there were a few things I felt a bit dissatisfied with. I don’t think it was terrible, but it could have been a bit stronger.
Overall The Night Shift is a super fun fast fast-paced read with a very interesting mystery at the heart of it. I defiantly consider this a weekend read given that I crushed this out in a weekend, so if you’re looking for something good to take up some time check this one out!
*** This section will have a spoiler***
Alright so let’s get into who the killer was at the mass murders, if it was the same or a copycat, and how Chris’s brother connects to it all.
The killer of both the ice cream store and the blockbuster situation is the same person it’s not a copycat. It turns out that the principal of the local high school is a grade-A freak and likes going for his students. If his love interests don’t do what he says or go with what he wants it’s clear the man does some terrible things in response. He also clearly did not learn his lesson when he messed with one of his students in 1999 when it didn’t go well. I definitely feel bad for Ella when this was exposed because he was a supporter of hers when she was going through her struggles after the massacre. His being the killer is just very fucked up.
So it turns out that Chris’s brother Victor was not the killer but what happened to him? When he was accused (he was accused because he was in a bad relationship with one of Ella’s co-workers) everyone assumed that it was true. The fathers of the murdered girls went over to Victor’s home when he was released on bail to enact their own revenge. Chris’s father being an asshole drunk let the men take his son. They buried his body after killing him. Chris’s father died after killing his wife in a domestic violence situation which was why Chris was abandoned.
Jesse was accused of being the killer and was the one that Chris was defending. When it’s exposed, his connection to Victor is taken off of the case. There was this suspicion that it could have been Victor the whole time but it didn’t make sense to me because what was his connection to the ice cream girls. Ella and Chris seemingly fall in love at the end, but we never really know what happens to Jesse, Chris’s dad, and the principal. I mean it’s assumed that the two men go to jail but with Jesse, I was curious to know more about what would happen with her. The end with Chris and Ella was a bit weird but it wasn’t the worst.
The mystery itself was super interesting and it was fun to see how Chris, Ella, and Jesse all connected to each other.
***
I hope you enjoyed this review! Have you checked out The Night Shift or any of Alex Finlay’s other work before? What did you think?
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