Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.
Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.
One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?
Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.
Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.
- Title: Graveyard Shift
- Author: M.L. Rio
- Publisher: Flatiron Books
- Publication Date: September 24, 2024
- Genre: Horror, mystery, thriller
- Targeted Age Range: Adult
- Content Warnings: mentions of cancer, smoking, animal death (on page), blood, human testing, death
- Rating: ★★★★.5
If there was anyone who was eagerly awaiting M.L. Rio’s next release after If We Were Villains, it was me. It’s been seven years since Rio’s debut novel was released, and while I’ve reread it (mumbled number) amount of times and will literally never shut up about it, I have been dying for another release from her. She had a short story in the dark academia anthology In These Hallowed Halls that was released last year, but Graveyard Shift is her first release since 2017 and first novella.
This has been at the top of my anticipated reads list since it was announced. I pre-ordered it the second it was available for pre-order, and have been so excited to read it. However, even with all that excitement, I waited a bit to read it after I finally got my hands on my copy. Was I slightly worried that this would fall flat for me? To be totally honest, yes. It’s not that I don’t trust Rio’s abilities, of course I do. I had loved her short story Weekend at Bertie’s in the In These Hallowed Halls anthology, so I knew that even in short form I enjoy her writing, but I was just a little nervous. I’m glad to say that I really had nothing to worry about as I found myself utterly captivated by Graveyard Shift.
I think we all have those authors whose work deeply connects with us. Whether it’s their characters, plot devices, writing style, what have you, their work just hits every time. M.L. Rio is one of those authors for me. It’s hard to fully describe how her work makes me feel, but every time I read something of hers I am fully invested from start to finish. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time I’m reading one of her short stories/novellas or if it’s my (mumbled number) time reading If We Were Villains. I just can’t put down her books and isn’t that such a wonderful feeling? Isn’t that why we all read? To find those books, those authors whose works captivate us from the first page to the last?
Something that Rio excels at, in my opinion, is character. She once again gives us a large group of characters to follow, and in a novella, you might think “Hm, maybe we shouldn’t be following five different characters, that could get confusing in such a short story” and I think with another writer it could be, but Rio is so great at creating characters that are complex and fully developed with many layers. I was about to say that I found all the characters to be interesting but was most interested in…and then my brain stopped because I found all of them compelling in different ways. I liked that we got to read from each character’s point of view for multiple reasons, but especially because it gave us an opportunity to see how the characters all viewed one another. The dynamics between them were so interesting and I really could’ve read endless pages about them; most of the time they didn’t particularly like each other but they were all connected by this graveyard and by their insomnia so they still cared about one another on some level. I really thought they were fascinating.
The atmosphere of this book was insane from the beginning. Rio is so great at creating a vibe and bringing the reader into the world of her characters. I felt like I was in the graveyard experiencing this alongside them. The horror aspects of this novella were so good; it wasn’t really bloody or gory (though there definitely is some gore, especially around animals) but it was so unsettling. Unsettling horror is one of my favorite types of horror, so I’m sure that’s a big part of why this book really worked for me. The writing was vivid, creepy, and captivating.
If there’s one thing Rio is going to do, it’s give me an ending that has me saying “No way that’s the end” and wishing that the book was 400 pages longer. Honestly, I love an open-ended ending, so I wasn’t mad about it. In fact, towards the end I was like “Oh, she’s gonna give us a slightly vague ending, isn’t she?” and I was right — though really, if you were paying attention, you can figure out what happens after, but I like that she doesn’t spell it out for us.
With each of her new works, M.L. Rio firmly establishes herself as one of my favorite authors. I’m so excited to see what her next full length novel, Hot Wax, has in store for us but until that’s released, I’ll just keep reading If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift.
Links for Graveyard Shift: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop
M. L. Rio was born in Miami and raised in North Carolina by parents from California, and has never known how to answer the question, “Where are you from?” Her writing career began in elementary school with Reading Rainbow’s Young Writers and Illustrators Contest and a story about a girl with a pet dragon and the problem of how to hide it from her parents. She picked up a pen to write her first novel at the much more judicious age of twelve. Half a dozen ‘drawer novels’ later, she is represented by Arielle Datz of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency, Inc. Her debut novel, If We Were Villains, was published by Flatiron Books in 2017, and has since become an international bestseller, published in twenty countries and fifteen languages. Her music writing is published in The Vinyl District.
In addition to her work as a writer, she is a recovering actor turned academic. She holds an MA in Shakespeare studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe, and a PhD in English literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research explores representations of madness and mood disorder on the early modern stage. She lives in Washington, D. C. with too many books, too many records, and a mutt called Marlowe.
