The Midnight Club Paperback – September 20, 2022

This is one of my all-time favorite books! Normally I'm not a fan of Christopher Pike but this particular book is incredibly insightful and full of heartbreaking and heartwarming stories.Ilonka is a patient at a hospice for teens and 20-somethings, Rotterham Home, she has made friends with other patients Kevin, Sandra, Anya and Spence. Every night at exactly midnight the five of them gather in the library to tell stories. Basically, telling stories is the only fun they can have, in a hospice, everyone is waiting to die. Each one of the five friends has a different form of fatal cancer. Then, they discover that one of the members of their club is leaving the hospice to go back to normal life!At the same time, Ilonka begins to have dreams of past lives, she remembers vividly life in Ancient Egypt, Asia and medieval Europe. The strange thing is that all the lives are connected to Kevin, a member of club Ilonka felt that she always knew from the first time she met him. Kevin's continuing story revolves around an angel and the misguided woman he loves, a story which is strangely parallel to the lives that Ilonka remembers.Then, one of the members of the midnight club dies, but not before they tell Ilonka a true story which begins a mystery and the ultimate resolution to the sad stories that plague Ilonka's past.Absolutely touching and revealing story. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone under the age of 14 though, this books should really not be in a children's catagory. I recommend it to anyone 14 to 114! This is just such a fabulous, fantastic story! Christopher Pike really hit on a timeless story with this book!

This was good book. I adored Pike’s books growing up and was delighted find this I hadn’t read. It wasn’t what I expected at all, but it was a cool story and he made me care!

I absolutely loved this one. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book by Pike but I’m glad I picked this one out! It grabs you and keeps you entertained the entire time. I read this in one day because I could not put it down. Friendship, love, and life lessons mixed into one.

It was a very moving story. I read a lot of Pike's books when I was much younger. My love of horror came from reading his books. I even remember the first on I read was Chain letter. This book wasn't horror, but very touching. I noticed they are making a series out of it and watched the trailer. It feels, after reading this book that the show runner read the synopsis of this book and knew of Pike's horror roots and ran with that idea, but this book is not a horror and no actual supernatural evil or creepiness is in this books that the trailer showed.I didn't think the epilogue was needed. It came off as hokey after the touching ending of the final chapter.

I love how it incorporated past lives and how you will always find your soulmate in a sense. And I love how its a hospice house for young people because when you think hospice, you think of older people. When in reality nowadays there are a lot more sick kids than we have seen in the past. Especially more childhood cancers.

Loved this book as a kid, and loved it even more upon re-reading it tonight as an adult. What a beautiful exploration of life and death. Full of love and connection.

Like many, I bought this book because of the Netflix series. I wanted a little more of the horror of the show. None of that is present. What the show took from the book is 90% true to the book, but all the horror elements are added in for the show. The book is more John Green dying-teenagers than RL Stein Fear Street. That's actually great. At their cores, they're both telling the same story: teenagers dying of cancer trying to feel alive. The series does that through horror; you feel most alive when you're scared about death. The book, however, uses their stories to reflect the lives the teens lived or want to live. They're making non-cancer fictions about their lives.SPOILER WARNINGThe book, however, is far more bleak. There is no hope of a metaphysical cure, there was no Jane who survived, there are no deathday parties to celebrate/mourn the passing of your expiration date. There is no hope, but there is love, compassion, friendship, and all the things that healthy people get- if only for a little while.

…and yet… it was absolutely wonderful. This book is not a teen horror book like I thought it would be (in the vein of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street, for example). Instead, it’s an incredibly spiritual book filled with intense love and loss. The stories that the kids tell are vivid, sometimes funny, sad, and haunting. You could absolutely believe they were written by a young person who knows that they are destined to die any day now. I quite enjoyed it!