Book Review - Jasmine Kuliasha's The Midnight Pack
The Midnight Pack by Jasmine Kuliasha
Published by: Orbit
Publication Date: May 27th, 2025
Format: eBook, 352 Pages
Rating: ★
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Jericho James has made a name for herself. Not the name she'd have necessarily chosen when she became a P.I. but when you become the foremost investigator in debunking cryptids, you embrace that rep. Also, it's never Cthulhu, it's almost always snakes. Occasionally an octopus. She should know, she's from Florida. Only once before has she investigated a case with a fatality. A case she'll never forget. Which is why when she's called to Stillbridge, Maine, to investigate the death of a college graduate who was hiking the Appalachian Trail who met a gruesome end she takes her job seriously. The locals assume it's a bear attack but the sheriff isn't quite so certain. Neither is the young boy Mikey who approaches Jericho to ask if she's there to kill the monster. In fact Mikey is soon her best source for information in the small town. Though she should have listened to him and never gone into the woods. But she needed to see the scene of the crime. And, according to the sheriff, the local hermit, Kermit, lives out in the depths of the forest, miles beyond the scene of the crime, and might be able to help. So she's off to find Kermit the hermit. Only Jericho has miscalculated the number of hours of daylight needed for her trek and only gets as far as the scene of the crime when she realizes she'll need to turn back. Of course that's exactly when she's attacked. Chased from the clearing she falls into a ravine and twists her ankle before she succumbs to darkness. She awakes the next day to sunlight streaming in through a window under a veritable mountain of blankets. Soon her rescuer makes an appearance. It turns out Kermit isn't such a hermit after all. He lives with his three sons, Benjamin, Theo, and Seth. It's Benjamin that Jericho is instantly drawn to. Neither of them can deny their chemistry. She is reluctantly, by some, welcomed into the Grey family compound. This isn't just a shack in the woods; there's terraces and gardens, patios and a gym, and a state of the art laboratory. Because these four men, who have been living in secret without any female presence since Kermit's wife and the boys' mother died five years earlier, are scientists. They are looking to fully eradicate a bloodborne pathogen. Not just keep it controlled like scientists can now do with HIV, but eliminate it completely. Their work is well funded and secret. Which is fine by Jericho. She can heal, do some research in their vast library, and ogle Benjamin. That is until it's brought home to her by some otherworldly forces that her hosts might be more dangerous than she thought. She really should have listened to Mikey.
This book had such a solid start; Jericho James arrives in Maine and befriends a child who knows all about the monsters in the woods and I literally had goosebumps. The Midnight Pack had all the hallmarks of Stephen King with a hint of Something is Killing the Children and then Jericho went into the woods and it became Twilight. Only somehow not even as good as Twilight if you dare to imagine that. Oh, and if you're wondering, Jericho knows all about Twilight and apparently learned nothing from Stephenie Meyer. Longing looks and losing her brain were what followed for the next couple hundred pages. I literally just couldn't with this book. It's like her desire overrode all capacity for rational thinking. How are they doing research without a computer? Do you think maybe they lied about not having one? Or about not having a phone? Or about exactly how you ended up injured? But then again, she debunks cryptids for a living and didn't even know what a wendigo is. A wendigo! If you Google cryptid it's literally the eleventh cryptid listed. AND might I add, this is with Google totally not working right anymore because of AI. Yes yes, we can argue that technically a wendigo isn't a cryptid, but the fact she'd never heard of one beggars belief. In fact I was hoping the killer would be like a wendigo/werewolf hybrid called a wendiwoof, but no, I did not get my wish, and while other people have done this type of hybrid they didn't name it the wendiwoof so I am claiming copyright. The ignorance of our heroine time and time again is just infuriating. Jasmine Kuliasha could of at least had some fun with Jericho being the personification of a dumb blonde, but she was just wanting to turn this into a romance, cue the heavy petting. And no. This book isn't sophisticated enough for this joke. I mean, it literally took over half the book for werewolf to even be uttered when it's on the freaking cover. And yes, I know that characters aren't self-aware, this isn't Thursday Next, but come on. Then again Jericho isn't even properly kitted out for a walk in the woods, always wearing just exercise tights and a tank top, maybe a light flannel. This is fall. In MAINE! Ugh, she is just too dumb to live. Let Benjamin's brothers have at her. But Jericho is only as ignorant as her creator. I didn't keep track of each and every infraction, it would have ended up longer than the book especially with how the house didn't seem to abide by the blueprints or the laws of physics. So let's go with the biggest one. A werewolf pack has a one out one in rule. So if they lose a member of the pack they have to be replaced. When Jericho kills the villainous brother the pack is worried she will be forced into becoming a werewolf to replace him. But hang on a minute. Five years earlier Kermit's wife, a werewolf, died. No one replaced her. So, um, what's with that? In fact what's with all of this. I just want to forget I ever read it. Sadly the worse the book the longer it remains.
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