Midnight Strikes
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this explosive fantasy debut, a provincial girl must work with an infuriatingly handsome prince to escape a nightmarish curse that forces them to relive the same night over and over.
"The time-loop fantasy you never knew you needed, where the fairytale ball is bloody and Cinderella is the Final Girl."—Gina Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Violet Made of Thorns
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As a member of the maligned Proensans, a group of citizens who were colonized by the affluent Ivarea Kingdom, 17-year-old Anaïs Aubanel's life has always been about marriage. If she weds a noble, wealthy Ivarean man, she could not only elevate her family to a higher, more comfortable station, but also improve the reputation of her people as a whole. The 400th Anniversary Ball is supposed to be Anaïs's best chance at snaring a husband, but those plans are upended when an unexplained explosion kills every attendant, including Anaïs. When she wakes up the previous afternoon, she realizes she's stuck in a time loop. Unsure about the origins of the temporal event or the explosion, she endeavors to uncover the plot and stop the disaster. The shaky time loop premise droops under the weight of a rotation too many, leading to slim character and relationship development. Nevertheless, Anaïs's profound feelings of isolation and loneliness, and her repeated deaths, including her subsequent grief and trauma following each, are handled with complexity and gravitas alongside discussions of intersectionality in this elaborate debut. Ages 14–up.
