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{September 17, 2011}   {Review} Haunting the Night by Mara Purnhagen (Past Midnight #2.5)

From Goodreads: Charlotte Silver has been through hell.

Her mom’s in a coma. She may have caused the death of a young man. And now her friend Avery wants her to tackle going to Prom? Not going to happen, even if she is dying to spend some alone time with her boyfriend, Noah. Instead, Charlotte needs to find some answers to a few nagging questions—why was her family attacked? Will her mother survive? And is there a creature from the Other Side coming for her? Soon enough, Charlotte’s search for the truth becomes a race against time. But she may just find the sign she’s been looking for all along…

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I love the Past Midnight series!  Of course, I went about it all wrong and read the second novel, One Hundred Candles, first.  Yet, I thought it was so good that I went back and read the first novel, Past Midnight (my favorite so far), and then the short novella, Raising the DeadI do love Purnhagen’s writing, but I am finding a trend with these novellas.  Although slightly removed from the main storyline and being too short for a complete novel, I’ve found that I don’t care for these novellas as much as I do the actual books in the series.  While these short novellas, especially Haunting the Night, give the reader more insider information pertaining to the characters, I feel like they are a little forced and not as well written as the actual novels. 

I would love to see Purnhagen flesh out these novellas into full novels, focusing on more details and adding more to the storyline, because there is so much she could do with it all.  However, I also like having these novellas because they give me something to sink my teeth into while I wait for the next novel in the series, so I guess I’m a little torn. 

Haunting the Night is a great story directly connected to events from One Hundred Candles.  I suggest everyone read it, and the other books in the series, but be forewarned, you do need to read the whole series in order to understand what is happening in Haunting the Night.  Three stars.



et cetera