Review: Nightfall

Nightfall by Jake Halpern
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nightfall is one of those books that grabbed my attention on numerous occasions, repeatedly leaving me curious about the story. Despite my interest, I never went ahead and purchased the book. That is, until it happened accidentally. When looking for some books to complete and offer Nightfall caught my attention and it seemed oddly familiar. Deciding it was the best of the available options, I grabbed the book. It wasn’t until much later that I made the connection between the book I had purchased and the book that had caught my attention on multiple occasions.

In truth, part of the reason why I’d initially been avoiding Nightfall was due to my prejudice towards young adult horror and thriller novels. I never did the young adult thing with these genres, jumping straight into the adult stuff, meaning I always find the young adult books in these genres to be far too predictable and never quite as dark as I would like them to be. That is not to say I do not enjoy them, simply that they never live up to my expectations.

Such was the case with Nightfall. It was an interesting read, I cannot deny that, and yet I had been hoping for so much more. In my mind this book was to be much darker than it was, it would have more scares than it did, and I would be sucked in even deeper than I was. I cannot deny it was an enjoyable enough story, one that had me curious as to how things would come together, but I had been hoping for more from this one.

In truth, this was closer to a three-point-five-star rating than the three-star rating I gave it. The concept was intriguing, and there were so many things to see throughout. Although not everything was given the depth it could have been, you could see what the story was building upon. My biggest issue, however, and the reason why I could not round my rating up, was the number of unanswered questions I had at the end of the story. I felt as though too many things were not given the resolution they should have been given, there were too many things I wanted to understand better, and I wanted a more solid conclusion to certain story treads.

If another story is to be released in this world, I will likely give it a go – namely in hopes of receiving those answers I’m desperate for. As it currently stands, as a standalone novel, Nightfall was not quite all I had hoped it would be.

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