This is the second book in her new series about 3 women who have a lost night. They had never met before that night. And they wound up with psychic abilities afterwards. Each ability is different, and in their quest to find out what happened to them that night, they find that they aren’t the only people who have lost a night and wound up with some new talent.
This book is about Talia. She’s looking for clues to not just her missing night, but the reasoning behind it. She and her friends have potentially discovered the trigger: a psych eval that all of the people missing a night were given. This list is now up for sale on the Dark Web. When she goes to meet the person to buy it, she also meets Luke. Turns out, he’s also a “missing nighter.” The two of them are there for the same thing, but neither trusts each other. Going into the house, Talia’s ability allows her to find things. She finds something leading to their missing informant. The two of the band together to find her. This leads them to the Night Island.
This island was previously used by the government for some biological weaponry in the form of plants. The entire island is covered by them. Someone bought the island and turned it into a mindfulness retreat. So Talia and Luke book themselves a little retreat. The main draw is it’s a place to disconnect from everything. However, the reason it’s so easy to do that is because there’s zero cellular coverage and no wifi. There’s an old house, and several cabins or cottages. It looks like someone put the bare minimum into it. Except for the food. The food is amazing. Enough for guests to put up with the weirdness of the island.
Luke’s talent is he can calm people down. He can literally change their mood. He used it as a hostage negotiator, and he thinks he can actually kill with his talent. He said he’d always been able to do that on a smaller scale, but after his “missing night,” it’s so amped up that he can manipulate moods. His memory is missing parts, and what he does remember from that night involve a scalpel and a dead body. But he can’t be sure he’s the one who killed the person from his memory. Or if it’s even a real memory.
This series is really intriguing. We have random people who all have a missing night, all in different locations, and who all may have had a small bit of psychic power, but after that fateful night, their psychic gifts are bigger and stronger. They seem to find each other as they try to find out what happened to them. And it seems that the conspiracy theorists have gotten hold of the mystery and are now involved. Everyone with a murder/mystery podcast has started digging. I have a feeling this book will be a trilogy, but I think there’s enough here to make it longer. I will say, though, that this book was slower than the first. It didn’t have the same sense of urgency the first book had, and I didn’t feel we got enough backstory on Luke. What we did get felt rushed. That being said, I enjoyed the book, and I’m looking forward to the next one.
Oh, and for the Jayne Castle fangroup, I got Harmony cross-over vibes. I’m just saying 😉
***ARC courtesy of Berkley via Netgalley
