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Anaïs is an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball. She has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible bachelors — especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. She’s only making an appearance for her mother’s sake. A few hours of pretending, then she can go home, she tells herself. But at the stroke of midnight, an explosion rips through the palace, killing everyone in its path. Including her.
The last thing Anaïs sees is fire, smoke, and chaos… and then she wakes up in her bedroom, hours before the ball. No one else remembers the deadly attack or believes her warnings of disaster.
Not even when it happens again. And again.
If Anaïs is going to escape the nightmarish time loop, she’ll have to take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court’s gilded surface hides countless nobles restlessly grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even overlooked royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It’s up to Anaïs to untangle the knots of secrets and deceptions and find a way to put a stop to this herself if she ever hopes to survive past midnight.
Midnight Strikes delivers the interesting concept of a time loop in a fantasy setting. It’s not a Cinderella retelling, as one might expect from that title (or at least as I expected), but it does include interesting blood magic and the sheer determination of one girl who just wants to make the nightmare end.
One drawback is that the time loop concept, while fascinating at first, threatens to become repetitive as the story goes on, with no real sense of progress. Perhaps it’s a story that would be better to binge read, but I found it hard to pick up after pausing. Even the ending felt both rushed and unfinished.
Overall, I found it to be an okay read, but it’s definitely not one that fits my reading tastes.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 30 uses of strong language, 8 uses of moderate language, 22 uses of mild language, and 3 uses of the name of Deity in vain. Violence is bloody, repetitive, and often gory, and characters die by countless means. Prejudice is also prevalent in the plot, with a country overtaken and assimilated into a new culture and its people viewed as lesser. Characters kiss.
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