Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) by Charlaine Harris

Published: May 6th 2014

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth…

  Midnight Crossroad is the first entry in the Midnight, Texas trilogy. Holding true to Harris’ signature style, Midnight Crossroad combines supernatural elements, loveable characters and small-town mayhem. This is Harris at her finest. Her prose flows so seamlessly throughout this book, it as though she was made to tell this story.

Midnight Crossroad is a paranormal mystery centered on the story of a tiny Southern Texas town and the people within it. This town is known for keeping secrets, and often those who live in the town live there to keep their secrets safe. The paranormal elements are accepted as part of the town. Yes, there’s a vampire, there’s a psychic and witch. It is their way of life. Everyone has a reason for living in the remote, one-stop-sign town, and they all know better than to pry into others’ lives. They all have their secrets, and they all want to keep their secrets. Of course events are set in motion that lead to the spilling of a lot of them. When a member of the community is accused of murder, hard truths are exposed and chaos ensues.

It is curious how Harris has blended the worlds of all four of her previous series: Sookie Stackhouse, Aurora Teagarden, Lily Bard and Harper Connolly. Harris fans will be elated to see old characters popping up throughout the book. That tug of familiarity really works to pull the reader in. When we know the characters, and have a history with them, we feel more emotionally attached to them. It is Harris’ style to create characters we can’t help but fall head-over-heels for.

Midnight Crossroad reminded me why I fell in love with Charlaine Harris’s writing originally. As I read this novel, I felt the same connection I had with her prose when I read Dead Until Dark all those years ago. Every page was a delight. I was left satisfied and enlightened and yet still curious about what is to come in the secretive town of Midnight, Texas.