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Title: Midnight Strikes

Author: Zeba Shahnaz

Genre: Time Loop, Time Travel, Netgalley, Young Adult, Fantasy, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, High Fantasy, Mystery, Bipoc, Folklore, Fairytales

Date Started: February 22nd, 2023

Date Finished: February 23rd, 2023

Status: Finished

Rating: 4.75/5

Sypnosis: In this explosive fantasy debut with a time-loop twist, a provincial girl must work with a roguish prince to stop an attack on the royal family and escape a nightmarish curse that forces them to relive the same night again and again.

Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end. As an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball, she has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible (and pompous) bachelors—especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. 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, 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. And again.

If she’s going to escape this nightmarish time loop, Anaïs must take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court's gilded surface belies a rotten core, full of restless nobles grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It's up to Anaïs to untangle these knots of deadly deceptions . . . if she can survive past midnight.

Review: A time loop.

A death lived every day.

Find a way to stop it all.

This book was something I really did not expect. I have read time loop books in the past and each one has a unique and this one was not quite as different as the others. We have a young woman lost in a time loop trying to stop it and learn why she keeps living it over and over. Along the way, she falls in love with a pompous prince who has no real memory of her each time.

This is what I did not understand - how she fell in love so fast with the prince and yet he had no memory of her each time. I would have thought that he would have maybe a small fragment of memory of these loops. Nope. None. He remembers none of them. There are times he does believe her and there are times he does not. I loved how he was in the beginning before the time loop started. I actually thought that this was a romance that could survive a time loop and yet it didn't. They interacted in some of them but there was no real connection in the feelings department from his side of the spectrum. I think if he had some memory or had some ability to be part of the time loop (it was said he was a magician so why could he not have memories?).

Anaïs tries to do so much during these time loops. No matter how many times she goes back, the loved ones she tries to save end up dying again and again. So, her attention turns to finding the person behind the whole bombing. Each time she goes back she finds pieces of information here and there before she realizes exactly who is behind it all.

The problem with all of this is that this becomes a conundrum with no end in sight. The loops are repeated too many times. Questions that should have been asked in the past are finally asked during one loop. Why wait until now. I get it things finally dawned on Anaïs to inquire about her necklace. I would have asked about it a long, long time ago.

Like the moment my Maman gave it to me.

I get this story was just meant to be a novel. The world-building was nice but I wish we had a bit more history of the people. There was a lot of potentials there for more of this world. I hope the author does go back to this world. I enjoyed it.

This book is one of my favorites of 2023. I loved the characters, the world, and the whole loop thing. It was definitely a page-turner to the very end. And the mystery is something you really won't see coming.


I want to take this moment to thank Netgalley, the author, and Random House Children for the chance to read this book before its release. This review is my own opinion.