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Book: “Midnight Somewhere: A Short Story Collection
Publishing Info: Blackstone Publishing, December 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: From Bram Stoker Award–nominated author Johnny Compton, Midnight Somewhere is a frightening collection of thought-provoking stories perfect for fans of Stephen King’s Night Shift , Tananarive Due’s The Wishing Pool , and the work of Junji Ito.
A man gets into a car that can take him anywhere he can imagine—including the past, into the worst mistake of his life, a memory he does not want to relive, cannot escape, and is even more afraid to alter …
A seemingly harmless, forgettable film about “alien hand syndrome” inspires a wave of self-harm among viewers—and even stranger things among those who become obsessed with it …
A woman tries to bring her dead lover to life through a macabre ritual that requires attacking his corpse. Is it because she longs to be with him again … or because the two of them have unfinished business?
The assorted characters in this thrilling collection encounter horrors that range from mysterious to murderous, discovering that darkness can find anyone, anywhere, at any hour of the day. After all, it’s always Midnight Somewhere …
Review: Thank you to Blackstone Publishing for sending me an eARC of this book!
I may just have to refer to 2025 as the Year I Read ALL The Short Story Collections”, because it was a LOT this year. Even though I had great luck with all of the anthologies and collections I read this year, I was always kind of waiting for the bubble to pop, wondering if THIS one would be the one that reinforced my general wariness of the format. When Blackstone Publishing reached out with Johnny Compton’s new horror collection “Midnight Somewhere”, I was interested, but in the back of my mind I was wondering if this was when the other shoe was going to drop. After all, I read his book “The Spite House” and it didn’t really click with me. But I decided to go for it, and am I ever glad I did! Because “Midnight Somewhere” was a great short stories collection!
As I usually do for short stories collections, I will review my three favorite stories, then I will review the collection as a whole.
“The Death Grip Challenge”: This was one of the first stories in the collection and it was the one that made me really settle in with excitement about what I was reading. A girl has been noticing that her father has been starting to act strangely after he started getting really into a viral video trend involving a B-horror film with a possessed hand. This one has a slow burn build up where you just know that something is creeping up on the characters (AND the reader), and I was so tense by the time we got to the climax I was totally wrung out. It’s weird and unexplained and also taps into very real anxieties about viral trends and everyone needing to get in on the action, no matter how harmful.
“Monster Bites”: As someone who loves her three cats to death (as well as all cats I’ve owned throughout my life), I was obviously going to have a special place in my heart for the scary story with the pet. Elisa hasn’t really connected with her girlfriend Grace’s dog Dandy after moving in, keeping her at arm’s length except for their evening walks. But when Elisa and Dandy run afoul something one evening, their true colors come out. This one is one of the less scary tales just because of how damn wholesome it is, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have scary bits! Some of the descriptions of the threat really, really set me on edge, and one is ALWAYS nervous when animals as involved in a horror story. But not to fret: no trigger warnings for animal harm in this one, and that’s all I will say.
“He Used to Scare Me By Accident”: This was probably my favorite story in the collection, and man does it kind of just kick you in the gut with creepiness and a quiet sadness to boot. Olivia and Stephen are a happy couple, though Olivia’s jumpiness manages to lead to Stephen scaring her by accident more often than not. Still, their marriage is solid and he is more than happy to try and warn her whenever he is coming just in case. Except the one time he doesn’t…. I can’t talk about this one TOO much without spoiling it, but I will say that I found myself deeply saddened by a few of the turns it took, if only because so much of what this story is about is regret, loss, and the things that we have done that continue to haunt us. I actually said ‘wow’ when I turned the last page.
And really, this is a very strong collection as a whole! Compton has a lot of different tones and ideas here, some of them deeply scary, others a little sweet, and even others incredibly witty and sometimes laugh out loud funny. And some of them are just so out there in the best ways (a rollercoaster coming to life and running off into the wilderness, what on EARTH?!). I don’t think that any were true clunkers, and the ones that didn’t hit as much were more about personal preference than anything the stories themselves did. It’s been a huge year of short story collections in my reading, and it’s collections like this that made me really pleased to give the format so many chances for the past year.
“Midnight Somewhere” is a lot of fun! I’m so glad that I decided to check it out, and horror fans really should too. Guess I have to go back and read Compton’s “Devils Kill Devils”!
Rating 8: A varied and incredibly entertaining collection of short horror stories with lots of different tones, vibes, and scares.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Midnight Somewhere” isn’t included on many Goodreads lists as of now, but it would absolutely fit in on “Horror: Short Stories”.
The Library Ladies 