ARC Review : Meet Me at Midnight by Jessica Pennington

Title : Meet Me at Midnight
Author : Jessica Pennington
Genre : YA contemporary
Release Date : April 7th, 2020
Publisher : Tor Teen

⭐⭐⭐

GOODREADS | PURCHASE

They have a love-hate relationship with summer.

Sidney and Asher should have clicked. Two star swimmers forced to spend their summers on a lake together sounds like the perfect match. But every summer it’s the same—in between cookouts and boat rides and family-imposed bonfires, Sidney and Asher spend the dog days of summer finding the ultimate ways to prank each other. And now, the summer after their senior year, they’re determined to make it the most epic summer yet.

But their plans are thrown in sudden jeopardy when their feud causes their families to be kicked out of their beloved lake houses. Once in their new accommodations, Sidney expects summer to continue as usual. But then she gets a note—Meet me at midnight. And Asher has a proposition for her: join forces for one last summer of epic pranks, against a shared enemy—the woman who kicked them out.

Their truce should make things simpler, but six summers of tormenting one another isn’t so easy to ignore. Kind of like the undeniable attraction growing between them.

*I receive an ARC from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange of honest review. Thank you Tor Teen for the book!

When I saw this book available to request in Netgalley I was so excited because hate-to-love? Yes please! Also, the fact that most of the books in NG are just “wish for it”, so generally seeing books that I could request is exciting. Unfortunately, when I read it, I didn’t get those feels I usually get whenever I read books featuring my favorite tropes. I’ll admit first that maybe, my expectations were too high for Meet Me at Midnight, so despite having all the things I usually enjoy in a book, it ends up being just an okay read for me.

I think the main reason why this book fell flat is the writing-style. I’ll be honest here, I was really bored throughout the book. I’m sure you hear this a lot, but I think it has to do with the telling-not-showing thing. Also, this book has a lot of monologue, that sometimes it stretch for pages (note that I read it in my phone, so I’m not really sure how it is in the physical book. It just felt so long when I read it). It’s not until the last few chapters that I enjoy this book and couldn’t put it down.

As for the characters, I actually could relate a lot to Sidney, but I was also kinda irritated with her. She’s the type a person that loves to plan (way) ahead and always think of the worst-case scenario, which is basically me in a nutshell. Planning ahead is a good thing, except that throughout the book she keep messing things up because of said planning, and reading this annoy me quite a bit. However, reading this book made me wonder if people see me that way too and I realize that I probably should just live a little sometimes. Beside Sidney, we also get Asher’s POV (though it’s little compared to Sidney’s), and he’s quite likeable that you can’t help but liking him.

I mentioned above that my expectations were too high, and I’m talking about the romance. Sure, there are some parts that made me swoon and giddy here and there, but mostly I just feel indifferent. There were barely any tension and chemistry between them, and I also feel the transition from ‘enemies’ to more happens out of nowhere.

All in all, Meet Me at Midnight might not reach my expectations, but if you’re okay with the writing-style, I think you could enjoy this book more than I did.