Every night, a group of insomniac adults meet in the graveyard of an abandoned church to smoke, talk, and pass away the evening hours. They come from all walks of life but each is haunted by their inability to sleep and find some solace in each other. They work the graveyard shift, and that shift is about to get interesting. When a freshly dug grave is discovered, the group finds themselves in the middle of a terrifying experiment that they must solve before the night is over.

M. L. Rio has written one other book, If We Were Villains, and that was one of my favorite books I read in 2023. As a result, when it was announced she had written a haunting novella, released just before Halloween, I knew I had to pick it up. Standing at just a little over one hundred pages, this story moves quickly and the mystery is off and running right away. Perhaps because it is a novella, Graveyard Shift is rarely slow or lagging.

Yet despite it’s quick pace, I felt the story was not complete by the end came. A few questions still remained and I believe this tale would have done much better as a full blown novel. The underlying issues that Ms. Rio addresses are extremely interesting and I found the characters to be intriguing. I would have loved to seen more exploration of these characters and themes. That is not to say this story should have been 400 pages, but another one hundred or so pages would have made the story all the more better in my opinion.

To summarize, Graveyard Shift is a thrilling late night mystery that is perfect for a dark and rainy weekend. The reader will never find themselves bored, but they may be left wanting more by the end and wishing the mystery took just a bit longer to solve.

4 out of 5 stars