Publishers Weekly
★ 05/13/2024
Coles astounds in her atmospheric gothic debut set in Victorian England. Orabella has never been expected to amount to much due to her lower-class background and biracial (half-Black, half-white) identity. When her white uncle, who took her in after her parents’ deaths, accrues a massive gambling debt, he barters Orabella as a wife to the mysterious Elias Blakersby to get out from under it. At 26, Orabella has never been with a man, making her nervous but determined to be a good wife. Fortunately, Elias is a kind man who spirits her away to his old but vast estate, Korringhill Manor, and dotes on her. Despite Elias’s apparent dedication to her happiness, life at Korringhill Manor grows increasingly nightmarish. Orabella’s creepy new servants refuse to leave her alone even for a moment, she has spells of dizziness and dissociation, and unexplained bruises show up on her thighs. As her perception of reality distorts, Orabella seeks to uncover the secrets of the Blakersby family before she is subsumed into the dreamlike manor. Coles’s prose is evocative and strange and pairs brilliantly with the gothic tropes she expertly deploys. This is a fever dream of a novel that readers won’t want to wake up from. Agent: Lane Heymont, Tobias Literary. (July)
From the Publisher
"Coles’s prose is evocative and strange and pairs brilliantly with the Gothic tropes she expertly deploys. This is a fever dream of a novel that readers won’t want to wake up from." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An immersive horror fairy tale marrying Crimson Peak to Pan's Labyrinth upon strange foundations. You're never really safe here, with Midnight Rooms wondrously defying expectations and refusing obedience. Donyae Coles leads us into a house of sinister magic, full of corners for peeking around, but careful—these walls have claws. A feverish, labyrinthine debut." — Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth
“An overwhelming sense of unease and rich atmosphere practically drip from every page in this disquieting and equally compelling debut novel from a new, devastatingly original voice in speculative fiction. In Midnight Rooms, Donyae Coles has crafted a superb and intricately layered fever dream that I continue to think about long after having closed the book.” — Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
“A hallucinatory Gothic nightmare, at once beautiful, cruel, and feral.” — Eden Royce, award-winning author of Root Magic
"Midnight Rooms is a gorgeous and heady take on the classic Gothic romance. Coles' deftly crafted heroine, Orabella, takes us along for a sweet and heavy fever dream of horror, with dark magic looming around every crumbling corner. A compelling story that won’t let go—this is everything I wanted.” — Laurel Hightower, author of Crossroads and Below
"Shadows dance in the corridors in Korringhill Manor and a family with secrets awaits in this decadent Gothic fairy tale. Donyae Coles' Midnight Rooms is a lush and shimmering, hallucinatory nightmare. . . captivating, potent and lyrical.” — Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Crime Scene
"Coles turns the typical fairy tale upside down and inside out and back again. The novel shifts to something like a fever dream, as Orabella's visions of her life in the manor dissolve inside what seems to be a 'court of fairies and monsters.' Therein lies the confusion of Midnight Rooms, and in it, a dark mystery unravelling across its pages—what is Orabella's imagination, and what is real?. . . With vivid and gory detail, Midnight Rooms is a genre-spanning work of history and horror, fantasy and fairy tale, that pulses with a dark energy from start to unsettling finish." — Shelf Awareness
“The writing style and common tropes that fans have come to expect are all here—the decaying house, ever-shifting hallways, odd family gatherings, and a deadly, inherited curse….Coles’s novel is another stellar example of how marginalized voices are taking a perennially popular genre, previously dominated by white characters and authors, and revitalizing it for 21st-century readers in a manner that honors its history but injects brand-new terrors” — Library Journal
“Midnight Rooms is a wonder—a rich and textured novel with the heart of a macabre fairy tale. Coles’ story is no less ominous, labyrinthine, and dark than the Gothic castle in which it takes place.” — Neal Auch, artist and author of Disassembly of the Pig
"Nothing is as it seems. A gorgeous, rich, and claustrophobic gothic horror-mance that reads like a fever dream. This is a novel to be savored.” — Nino Cipri, Astoria Bookshop, Queens, New York
Library Journal
06/01/2024
DEBUT Orphaned Orabella, the child of a Black mother and a white father, lives under the care of her paternal uncle in 1840s England. She has been raised in the city as her cousin's companion, but now that her cousin has married, Orabella's uncle is eager to marry her off as well. When the handsome and rich Elias Blakersby, who is white, asks for her hand, Orabella, knowing her options are few, eagerly accepts. Whisked off to the family estate in the countryside, Orabella is separated from everyone and everything she knows. What follows is a classic gothic, told with a deep reverence for and knowledge of the genre. The writing style and common tropes that fans have come to expect are all here—the decaying house, ever-shifting hallways, odd family gatherings, and a deadly, inherited curse. But there is also a modern sensibility that will hook today's readers, with references to (literal) gaslightings and sensual and empowering sex scenes. VERDICT Coles's novel is another stellar example of how marginalized voices are taking a perennially popular genre, previously dominated by white characters and authors, and revitalizing it for 21st-century readers in a manner that honors its history but injects brand-new terrors, similar to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas.
