A review by acarter
Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona

4.0

MIDNIGHT ON BEACON STREET absolutely delivers on its promise of transporting the reader directly into a scream queen nostalgia bomb. Seventeen-year-old Amy is a Nice Girl and beloved babysitter who, ironically, calms her paralyzing anxiety with the gory predictability of horror movies--especially the ones where a masked intruder wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting babysitter. It's October 1993, and Amy is settling in for her favorite regular gig, watching sweet Ben Mozinski and his precocious sister Mira; a normal night of pizza and charades quickly goes off the rails, with unexpected visitors, unsettling phone calls, and eventually, a body in a pool of blood. The plot unspools much like one of Amy's favorite movies, but readers who are looking for a high-octane slasher will be disappointed: Verona is far more interested in peeling back the layers of Amy's anxiety and exploring the lengths she'll go to keep her charges safe. This spooky thriller is a true slow burn and a love letter to classic horror--it's a killer debut, and I can't wait to see what Verona does next!