Book Review: "Graveyard Shift" by M.L. Rio

Every night, just around midnight, the five of them—Edie, Theo, Tuck, Hannah, and Tamar—gather in an old cemetery outside an abandoned and dilapidated church. It’s the only place on university property they can smoke.

They’re not friends but they’re not exactly strangers. They trade gossip, throw barbs at one another, but mostly they come, they smoke, they go.

But one night in October, they discover a freshly dug hole. The graveyard hasn’t been used in years, so who dug the hole? And what is it for?

When the man who dug the grave returns to fill it, several members of the group spy on him. What they find is creepy and confusing, but they can’t understand what it means, or why it’s there. So they follow the gravedigger to see if he’ll lead them to some answers.

The entire book takes place over the course of a few hours, and is seen from each of their perspectives. Is there a connection between the grave and other strange happenings?

I love dark academia so I decided to read this despite my usual fear of spooky stuff. This was creepy instead of spooky (and pretty gross in one or two places), and I never felt like the story took hold. I think there was a lot of potential here that wasn’t realized, so I’m not sure what the point was.