{"id":2942,"date":"2023-06-15T15:45:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T15:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2942"},"modified":"2023-06-29T16:33:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T16:33:55","slug":"midnight-is-the-darkest-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2942","title":{"rendered":"Midnight is the Darkest Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ruth Cornier is that rarity in fiction: a woman who had the chance to get out of the town that\u2019s too small for her\u2014in this case, Bottom Springs, Louisiana\u2014but stayed. Growing up, everyone knew her as the preacher\u2019s daughter, and nothing\u2019s changed, except that she\u2019s no longer under her father\u2019s thumb. She is still, however, the subject of her downtrodden mother\u2019s malice-filled plans to drag her back to the snake-handling church\u2019s fold. What\u2019s so objectionable about Ruth? It\u2019s her firm friendship with Everett Duncan, her Heathcliff-reminiscent best friend, who\u2019s returned to town after Ruth thought him gone for good. While Ever is the kind-hearted son of the mean town drunk, locals think he\u2019s an apple from a no-good tree, and even suspect him of being the Low Man, a supernatural being who drags people into the swamp. When a skull is found in that same swamp, Ruth and Ever are thrown back into dark days of their youth while also desperately trying to find what really happened before Ever gets what locals think he deserves. As in Winstead\u2019s <em>In My Dreams I Hold a Knife<\/em>, sharp writing, compelling dual timelines, and sympathetic characters will keep readers turning the pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ruth Cornier is that rarity in fiction: a woman who had the chance to get out of the town that\u2019s too small for her\u2014in this case, Bottom Springs, Louisiana\u2014but stayed.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[59,52,51,53],"class_list":["post-2942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-literary","tag-psychological","tag-thrillers","tag-women"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Midnight-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Midnight-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}