
Title: Midnight Strikes
Author: Zeba Shahnaz
Genre: YA Fantasy / Romance
Publication Date: March 14th, 2023
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Rating: ⭐⭐

“Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end. As an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball, she has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible (and pompous) bachelors—especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. But at the stroke of midnight, an explosion rips through the palace, killing everyone in its path. Including her.
The last thing Anaïs sees is fire, smoke, chaos . . . and then she wakes up in her bedroom, hours before the ball. No one else remembers the deadly attack or believes her warnings of disaster.
Not even when it happens again. And again. And again.
If she’s going to escape this nightmarish time loop, Anaïs must take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court’s gilded surface belies a rotten core, full of restless nobles grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It’s up to Anaïs to untangle these knots of deadly deceptions . . . if she can survive past midnight.” (Goodreads)

I thought this would be an interesting book due to the blurb. There were some fascinating things about it but the whole time loop thing just didn’t work for me and it’s probably because it is my least favorite thing to see in a book.
The book is told from one point-of-view and it comes from Anaïs. She becomes stuck in a loop due and feels that it is her job to undo the revolution that is starting and save the royal family. For this reason I thought she was a strong character. It would honestly be exhausting to keep waking up over and over again to live out the same events and see people die each time. She tried her best each time to find new information and through that start putting the pieces together.
The other characters that Anaïs interacts with are very flat in my opinion. It’s hard to get to know them when the day keeps repeating and with Anaïs trying to solve the mystery its not like we are really getting to know them personally. The romance was okay but it also falls into the being flat category. I just didn’t feel it.
Books with a time loop can be cool but it’s just really hard for me to get into them and that’s definitely on me and not the book!
Overall, this was okay. I just didn’t fall in love with the characters and thought that some of the things fell flat for me.
