October 24, 2025

The Longest Night, by Lauren Carter

Okay, this book was totally bananas. And also made me very uncomfortable, and disoriented, and I had no idea what trajectory the narrative was going to take, which put me in league with the protagonist, but I also could not put it down, and it was all so fascinatingly mind-bending and satisfying that I think I actually loved it. Lauren Carter’s The Longest Night begins in Minnesota on the winter solstice in 2021 when Ash Hayes finds herself locked out in the frigid cold after escaping another one of her parents’ fights the night before her best friend’s father’s funeral. She’s left her phone inside, her frantic knocking brings no response, and she’s not dressed for the elements, frostbite already setting in, and so it seems like her only choice is to make it to a distant neighbour’s place, and the next thing she knows, she’s waking up in the strangest place.

It’s a house like something out of a time warp, no modern technology, the kitchen appliances are olive green. There are boxes and boxes of stuff, the windows are sealed, her clothes are gone, her hand is bandaged, and the only thing she can find to keep warm is fur stole still with its fox’s head. And it’s here where she meets Lucille and the doctor, the curious people who seem to be holding Ash hostage with especially nefarious intentions that won’t become clear for some time and will culminate in a horrifying act of sexual abuse.

When Ash manages to escape their clutches (although not for long—they’ll come and bring her back again) she discovers that the weird house and its inhabitants are only the beginning of bizarre happenings, for it seems that every time she ventures outside, it’s the morning of September 11, 2001, a day of great importance for the entire world, but for Ash’s life in particular—it’s a day that set events in motion that would lead not only to the death of the baby brother Ash never got to meet (she was born in June of the following year), but also to the death of Ash’s best friend’s father, Frank, who would take his own life after years of PTSD following tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9-11. So is here her chance to alter fate and save the people she loves? But what about the laws of time travel, which Ash is aware of after years of watching TV with her grandmother, not to mention the beginning of her university studies in astrophysics? Should she adhere to those rules and try not to change future? How does the future still manage to seem so random and unknown even when you have an idea of what happens next? And how did Ash get herself into this time loop? Is there any way that she’ll be able to defeat the evil doctor with his omnipotent powers and get back to her time?

There is tough stuff in this novel, parts of the abuse which Ash is subject to that is difficult to read, and yet Carter balances this with the real love and warmth in her life from her best friend and her grandmother, and also with fascinating questions about fate and destiny, borrowing all kinds of fun time travel tropes from popular culture. (At one point, Lucille and the doctor show up at Ash’s parents’ place with a photo of her, asking, “Has anybody seen this girl?”) At a certain point I was fully invested, buckled in for the wild ride, and I just really hoped that Carter would find a satisfying way to resolve this bonkers story of time loops and quantum leaps—which she absolutely does.