Ashley Winstead

Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

Lindsay

Laws, religion, civil society  - they were just veneers, constructions put in place by the powerful to tame us animals, impose control. Over so many years we'd forgotten, treating the constructions like they were part of nature. But nature doesn't know good or evil. Allnature knows is survival. How terrifying and freeing that right and wrong aren't laws in stone but navigational instincts, like the kind of instinct a swallow feels for its place in a murmuration, like what guides geese north on a dark and starlets night.

"Who cares about their paper-thin morals and self-serving laws? My chest expands as I breathe deeply. What I'm about to say is my mightiest rebellion yet. The kings get to make the rules, but that doesn't make them right. All your life they've treated you like something unnatural and outside them. You know why my father is so powerful? Not because he's wise or good. Because he has the ability to point to someone and cast them out of the Kingdom of heaven." 

Cast them out of goodness, out of community. that's how he'd gotten his start, after all. The foundation of his power was fear and exclusion, not holiness.

 "Why should we have to love and obey a world that doesn't love us back?" My voice rises above the pounding rain. "Renard treated me like I was less than a person when he tried to rape me. And all those men told you that you were less than every time they abused you. To them, we're not people the way they are. We’re lower creatures. Animals. Beasts. You know what I say to that? Okay, then! I'm done trying to change their minds." I swallow past the lump in my throat. "Twenty-three years of trying to persuade them, to make them love us, has gotten us nowhere. I accept it - we're not human. So why should we be bound by human laws?"

"Who would defend us if we didn't defend ourselves? Who would've ever stopped Fred and Herman and Renard if not you? Your father, if not me? Their rules don't apply to us, Ever. We didn't ask for it, we didn't want it, but they forced us to become a law onto ourselves."

Then, like a damn cracking, the grief poured out. I sank to the floor and cried so hard it felt like I was breaking myself in half. and still, I couldn't get my body to express the true fullness of my grief. I was the architect of my own misery. no amount of sobbing was equal to the pain.

You're the queen of walking on eggshells. That's why you've always been so quiet. But you're not walking on them with me. You feel safe enough to get mad.

It was amazing how embodied obedience was. Amazing how, even though sometimes I thought I hated my parents, their commandments still wormed their way so deep into my subconscious that obeying them was more muscle memory than choice. That had to be the worst kind of prison - the one whose bars were buried under your skin, invisible cages around your heart and mind.

But joys are few and far between in this life, so I can hardly bring myself to feel guilty.

Eventually the tall, skinny pines give way to a small clearing, and in the middle is a tree that towers above the others. It reaches out with a hundred snaking arms, some of them bent low to the ground. We call it the Medusa, because long ago, Everett and I decided we would give our love to villains. We know all too easy it is to become one when you're misunderstood. Our love is a corrective measure.

I wasn't my parents' kind of girl, not on the inside, but I wasn't anyone else's, either.

Haritha R

sometimes a person is more than a person. Sometimes they’re a lifeline. Your ticket out, not just of a house or a town but an invisible prison whose bars are in your mind. Sometimes they’re a key in the exact shape of the lock that cages you.

“We’ll explore during the day and read at night and—” “Be happy,” 

The Bible talks endlessly about parental sacrifice: God sacrificing Jesus, Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Tests of love and devotion. But what about what children sacrifice? What about the courage it takes to right our parents’ wrongs, course correct the mess they’ve left us?

I finally understand the greatest pain of all. It’s the moment you realize the family who raised you—the people who witnessed you in every moment of tender vulnerability growing up, who saw your small scraped knees, your spilled tears, your young eyes wide in wonder—don’t love you back. At least not the same way. Your love is, and will always be, unrequited. Maybe I’d been a masochist for holding on to hope for so long, or maybe it was only human, the resilience of that tiny flicker in my heart. Either way, kneeling on the floor of their house, the flame is finally snuffed. Loneliness and despair wash over me.

this is what I wanted before I even had the language for it: the kind of love that can look at ugliness, complexity, the unvarnished truth, and not flinch. A love that peels back the layers. Forget God. This is the love that will save me.

“Why should we have to love and obey a world that doesn’t love us back?”

There are no heroic vampires or mystical swamp creatures. There’s not even a God or a Devil. They’re all fiction. There’s no one out there making sure everyone gets what they deserve. It’s just us.

Why did we fall in love like lit matches dropped in kerosene? The answer came to me easy as anything. And if I could’ve been honest with my mother, I would’ve said we loved like this, with an all-consuming passion, because our hearts had awakened to the truth of what we wanted for ourselves. The awakening itself was a miracle for those of us who had no map for love, who’d never once felt an emotion directed at ourselves as strong as the ones we gave to others. How do you draw a map of a place you’ve never been? 

Love isn’t salvation; it’s a curse. Feeling so much, wanting so much, not being in control of yourself.

I knew he needed taking care of, escaping wasn’t a luxury I could afford.

I truly cannot tell which way is up or down, if I’m sinking to the ocean floor or floating to the moon, on my way to Heaven or Hell, if there is even any difference between them after all.

“Pain is how you know you’re alive, Ruth. It’s not something you should bury.”

my heart has always been hungry to love, so maybe it isn’t such a surprise

I wasn’t my parents’ kind of girl, not on the inside, but I wasn’t anyone else’s, either. So instead of friendships, I cultivated quiet rebellions

If you enjoyed You Shouldn’t Have Come Here by Jeneva Rose, then you oughta give this a try. 

This turned out to be much better than I thought it would be.  I do question some of the moral choices of the characters.  These (to me) choices seem to be wrong, but they are appearing more and more in fiction.  I do not know if it is because younger generations see things differently, or if the choice is part of the twists in the story.  In any case, I enjoyed this book.

shellybn

I wanted more! Towards the end, I was dying to know what was going to happen. The ending was exactly what this book needed. 

Amanda 

André Silva

** spoiler alert **
           "Nothing says endless love     like capital murder." - Jax Teller (Sons of Anarchy)

So much potential sadly a majority of it was left unrealized. The dual time line was interesting but as the story progressed I found the past more enjoyable. Lastly, Ruth was an interesting character but by the end hadn’t really changed all that much in my opinion. 

tatiana ✧˖°

if i took a shot every time there was a twilight reference, i'd be completely passed out by the end of the book

lucy

The conversation with the author hit more than the book did.

This book is excellent. It reminded me a lot of The End of the F***ing World on Netflix. I just wish they’d gotten to take more of those bastards down with them! 

Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

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