Bring Me Your Midnight, by Rachel Griffin, is a YA standalone fantasy following a coven of witches living on an island with only a small stretch of sea separating them from the mainlanders who fear and seek to control their magic. Tana, the daughter of a prominent family in the coven, has been arranged to marry the governor’s son to establish an alliance that would mean security and protection for her fellow witches. When she meets a boy who practices the “dangerous” magic she’s always been taught to shun, she must question how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for the sake of peace with the mainland.

This is a very solid YA standalone fantasy. It’s a compelling story about Tana deciding whether it’s really worth it to sacrifice her own happiness and personality for potential peace, exploring questions of staying true to oneself and making one’s own choices that are undoubtedly appealing to a YA audience.


Tana’s story and personality arc is extremely well done—this is fundamentally a story about her own self-discovery, and Griffin paces that plot extremely well. There is no sudden shift from dutiful daughter to empowered witch—instead, the reader is able to see Tana gradually growing into herself, wavering along the path in ways that are believable and relatable. I wasn’t expecting this to be such a strong coming-of-age story, but was pleasantly surprised at the emphasis being placed on that plot line over the romance.

The romance between Tana and Wolfe felt like the weakest part of the story to me. It’s a forbidden-romance trope, so anybody who enjoys that will probably like this element of the plot. It just feels very insta-love to me in parts, and in some cases felt like it detracted a bit from Tana’s character arc. It wasn’t horrible—it was a very okay YA romance—but it was far from the most compelling part of the book.

I would have liked a little more worldbuilding, but overall am content with the amount of information we’re given. Griffin tells us exactly what we need to know for the plot, and, for a standalone fantasy book that has only a limited amount of page time to give a full story, that is a good choice that helps the plot and character development to take center stage and develop fully. However, I couldn’t help but be curious about the wider world of the story, even though I recognize that the relatively limited scope was overall beneficial for the book. Similarly, the magic system was exactly what it needed to be for the plot, but I still would have loved a little more information about it.

Overall, I really enjoyed Bring Me Your Midnights. I’m giving it 4 stars, taking off one star for the weakness of the romance. It’s a wonderful standalone, demonstrating a care for character growth that you don’t see often in YA fantasy, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody looking for a witchy YA fantasy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.