The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey: How do I even express thoughts on this book?!

The Girl at Midnight 

by 

Melissa Grey

I have very mixed feelings for this book. Because it was kind of a bunch of random clichés thrown together and mixed thoroughly. Still . . . I enjoyed reading it. And while I’m not going to shout from every roof top that THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING OH MY GOSH READ IT!!!! I still liked it well enough. 

Credit has to go to the writing of course. But I could  also say that it was the dragon and bird people that sold. Especially the bird people (but why do they live underground if they’re birds?).

Even the dragon people were cool, if mildly homicidal. I feel like it was mostly Echo’s voice that I got attached too. She wasn’t very new (like most of the rest of the book) she was engaging and funny and liked strange words and food. How could I not like her?

Speaking of Echo

Echo: like I said she loved food and collecting strange words just for the heck of it. Basically she and I were destined to get along. She was adopted by those bird people I was talking about and she basically runs erands for their seer in return for . . . food?

Still I liked Echo. Though I’m not sure I follow her romantic feelings towards . . . anyone really. But I never get that kind of stuff so it’s not a big deal anyway

Caius: I spent the first two hundred pages calling him Cassius because apparently

 He’s one of the aforementioned dragon people ergo he is the love interest. I wasn’t necessarily offended by Caius but I didn’t really care about him too much either. His first scene was him basically sending two guys to their deaths so I expected him to be some sort of antihero.

But he wasn’t  . . . vaguely confused.

Dorian: He was Caius’s friend and body guard or something but . . . Why was this guy here? I mean he was a mildly interesting character and had a few good lines but he didn’t seem to have any purpose.

Except for maybe some romantic reason? Why?

Ivy: Kind of the same thing here actually. She was Echo’s friend who had literally nothing to do past the first hundred and fifty pages. She was really sweet and all but rather purposeless.

Jasper: I liked him initially. He was this smooth talking totally despicable bird person who grudgingly let Echo and her friends hunker down in his wacky apartment because Echo saved his butt. But then . . . he just didn’t have anything to do. Which would have been fine if he had been the only secondary character to be useless. But obviously he wasn’t so I’m a bit put out.

  

Things I liked

The writing was really enjoyable. It was fast paced and had some really pretty description, without becoming flowery and inhuman.  Frankly that’s the one writing style I can’t stand so when the description got heavy I got a little nervous. I shouldn’t have because the narrative stayed concise and really quite witty throughout the whole book.

Echo: really she was the only character I actually liked. Caius was too busy being inconsistent and ‘in love’ for me to really get attached (though I still found his snark funny) and frankly the rest of the characters felt kind of extraneous. But I found Echo to be really cool and funny.

Things I didn’t like so much

None of the other characters had a purpose. I mean as soon as they all joined up it was Echo and Caius going out and doing things while Jasper and Dorian and Ivy hung around their secret hiding place and . . . flirted? I guess.

 No thank you.

The plot twist felt a lot like Daughter of Smoke and Bone. In fact the whole book kind of felt like a rehashing of every other book out there. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when done in moderation but moderation this was not.

So in conclusion

 I have mixed feelings about this book. Maybe the second one will resolve that who knows.