Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

The wildly popular Charlaine Harris comes back with a brand new series in Midnight Crossroad. Harris brings her brand of charm and quirk to a cast of characters who have tortured pasts. With the same immersion that Harris brought readers to Bon Temps, we are invited to the micro-town of Midnight, Texas.

CHarris-Midnight CrossroadWelcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

One of the biggest gripes of Harris’s Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse series was that there was one protagonist who oftentimes wasn’t as interesting as her supporting characters. This all changed in Midnight Crossroad where we are introduced to a wonderful cast of characters with ensemble writing. This take is fantastic and reminds me a lot of how the Sookie Stackhouse novels were expanded upon in the tv show True Blood. It is the exact direction I had hoped Harris’s writing would take and I was pleasantly surprised to read it.

The characters are fun and hint at a lot of hidden pasts. There’s Bobo, the thirty-something golden boy pawn shop owner who gets tied into the novel’s central mystery. His new tenant Manfred is a psychic but the light version of Sookie Stackhouse. His personality is unique however, and I enjoy his judgmental blubbering as it makes him distinct. Last but not least of the main trio is Fiji, the twenty eight year old, curly haired and plus-sized witch who owns her own New Age shop across the street. The rest of the towns characters are no less interesting. The talking cat Mr. Snuggles is utter perfection in his attitude and laziness. The most familiar pairing feels like Midnight’s version of Pam and Eric, the popular vampire blonde vampire duo friends of Sookie Stackhouse. Olivia is actually a brunette who hints at a career in espionage and Lemuel is a non-traditional vampire with a touch based energy sucking ability.

The central mystery is a step up from others I have read by Harris. The ending was well done and had a high creep factor. Midnight Crossroad isn’t especially funny or action packed. Despite this, I found it entertaining and look forward to seeing what else comes out of Midnight. There’s a ton of potential and I think this series will appeal to a host of readers.

Read Order:
Midnight Crossroad
Day Shift

About Natassia 143 Articles
I am a performer by trade and have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. My bookshelves are full of many genres but I have a love of fantasy, SciFi and steampunk which have only spurred my performing dreams to help one of these fabulous worlds come to life. I tend to read books with a lot of edge and grit; if it's got zombies, space battles or fantastical steam inventions, I'm in. When I'm not reading or off making my own adventures, I can be caught watching movies of every era, gaming, and being scandalously political like any good steampunk heroine.