The name, The Midnight Feast, along with the cover art had us excited to read this latest novel from Lucy Foley. What happens at The Manor, where luxury meets mystery, over the 36 hour journey we are taken on is unique, but overall not our favorite.
Set against the backdrop of an ancient forest and a community with deep-rooted secrets, Foley set out to tell us a story to keep us guessing to the very end. While the book is well written and does its job, we found ourselves a little confused and wanting a bit more.
We knew what were getting into with a Lucy Foley novel, a lot of characters and stories told from different perspectives. The solicitation gives us four, which isn’t a lot, the founder, the husband, the mystery guest and the kitchen help. However, in the end we are also introduced to a number of other characters as well as another perspective. Additionally, some of these characters go by different names in the current timeline than they do in the flashback sequences. All this made it harder for us to follow along, taking us longer to digest and understand each chapter.
The flashbacks in The Midnight Feast were told via a diary from 15 years ago, which in the grand scheme of things is not that long ago and yet characters couldn’t recognize each other. This is a unique way of filling in the story with stuff we need to know, but overall we found the teenage angst within these pages annoying and we were rushing to get through the chapter to move onto the current timeline.
The presence of the Night Birds, an avenging force from pagan folklore, is there to add an element of suspense and mystique to the story, but ultimately was easy to predict.
In the end, The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley was worth the read. Foley is an excellent writer when it comes to these types of stories. The different perspectives is perfect some people, just not for us. When you boil it down, each chapter was well written and easy to understand, but as an overall book it was harder.
The Midnight Feast hits bookstores everywhere on June 18, 2024. Pre-order the audiobook on Libro.fm and support local bookstores.
