The Secret Hour

Midnight. A mysterious time. A quiet time. An untouchable time.

When Jessica Day moves to the small-town of Bixby, Oklahoma and starts having strange dreams, she thinks it's something in the water. Because every night she wakes up, and everything seems to be frozen. The rain pauses midfall. People are unresponsive. All is silent.

But then the Midnighters find Jessica, and she discovers that it's no dream.

Midnighters, kids born at the exact stroke of midnight. The only people able to access "the blue hour," the secret, twenty-fifth hour of the day when all other life freezes. Kids with extraordinary powers, and dark, midnight enemies; ancient evil monsters called darklings and winged black snakes called slithers. And now Jessica realizes show more she's one of them.

She hesistantly joins the other four Bixby Midnighters: Rex, a seer who can sense the trails of darklings; Melissa, a prickly mind-reader constantly assailed by the white noise of the daytime world; Dess, a cool polymath who knows her way around every type of calculation imaginable; and Jonathan, a handsome acrobat who becomes literally weightless in the midnight hour. She learns how to navigate their world, where bright steel and the number 13 are their only weapons against the darklings. And she tries to discover what her own hidden ability is, because it may be the most important power of all.

Westerfeld takes a really original concept and runs with it, painting a startlingly believable scenario with five varied, realistic characters that plays out both during the day and in the dead of night. It quickly becomes obvious where the true action lies. show less

Che dire di questo primo volume dei Diari della Mezzanotte? È un libro particolare e assolutamente degno della bravura di Scott Westerfeld.

Ho atteso molto prima di acquistare il primo volume, prendendolo e riposandolo ogni volta… Non so precisamente perchè ma, credo, lo vedessi un po’ come un libretto di poco spessore.

Alla fine mi sono convinta, diciamo in un momento di stizza, e l’ho acquistato. Se devo essere sincera non me ne sono pentita. Certo, è una lettura piuttosto leggera rispetto a quelle a cui sono abituata ma non posso non esaltare l’originalità pressoché assoluta di questo scrittore. Non c’è che dire l’idea di una 25° ora che ripiega su e stessa in cui gli ‘oscuri’ si nascondono e tornano ad essere i show more predatori che erano sempre stati fin dalla preistoria è affascinante e coinvolgente.

Ho impiegato due giorni per leggere questo libro che, anche se corto per i miei standard (appena 230 pagine), ha saputo tenermi incollata alle sue pagine per tutta una notte ed una mattinata. Volevo capirci di più, volevo riuscire a capire cosa nascondessero questi ragazzi che snobbavano così tanto i ‘normali’ e beh, tanto di cappello!

Ho adorato questa piacevole lettura e senza dubbio comprerò il secondo, già in vendita. Dess, con il suo carisma, la sua mente logica e matematica ed la sua forza insaporita da una leggera punta di strafottenza è una dei personaggi che ho ‘gustato’ (per rimanere in tema) di più. Senza dubbio un altro personaggio che ho amato è Rex, non so perché, ma i suoi occhi mi affascinano da morire come il suo modo di prendere tutto con estrema serietà, là fuori non è un gioco e lui e Malissa lo hanno imparato sulla loro pelle. Loro, si può dire che siano stati i primi mightnaiters, coloro che hanno studiato la 25° ora senza nessuno alle loro spalle e dunque anche quelli più prudenti che cercano, a modo loro, di proteggere Dess, Jessica e, sì, anche Jonathan. Per quanto riguarda l’inquadratura del personaggio ho trovato ancora poco chiara proprio la taciturna e nervosa Malissa.

Come ho già detto, questo primo volume dei ‘Diari della Mezzanotte’ è, chiaramente, una sorta di introduzione che ha raccontato gli eventi in modo veloce, forse anche troppo per i miei gusti, ma non tralasciando nulla di essenziale. Vedremo con i prossimi. show less

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Day moves to Oklahoma and discovers a secret 25th hour, which most of Earth experiences as a millisecond glitch. But Jessica can move through the secret hour -- along with four other teenagers and a host of deadly supernatural creatures hiding from the daylight hours.

The best part of The Secret Hour is its dead-on sense of place. It nails the desolate, stifling Bixby, Oklahoma -- which is more than just a landscape, it's the very terrain of adolescence. Its teenage protagonists interact in believable patterns: they're less a super-sentai team and more resentful and uncertain of one another. But I'm a little dubious of the book's central assertion that human-made systems (numerology, metallurgy, cartography, show more etc.) can be used as weapons against the inhuman, unsophisticated enemies. (I suppose that my suspension of disbelief started slipping after longitude and latitude were introduced as supernatural factors -- what, demons arrange themselves in strict relation to Greenwich? And only since 1884?) I can understand it as an extension of a standard fantasy conceit (see: fairies and cold iron) but it would probably be more interesting if the midnight nasties turned out to be human-created bugaboos in the bargain (and thus existing in the same sphere as human-created systems for comprehending the universe). But I somehow doubt the Midnighters series (of which The Secret Hour is volume one) will go this route: it seems beyond the scope of its cheerfully YA ambitions. show less

Summary: When fifteen-year-old Jessica day moves to the small town of Bixby, Oklahoma, she's expecting it to be different from her old life back in Chicago... but she had no idea exactly how different Bixby really is. The water tastes funny, the town is covered with thirteen-rayed suns - and, oh yeah, every night at midnight, time stops for an hour. For most people, that extra hour zips past in a fraction of a second, but Jessica can perceive the hidden hour, and move about through a world that seems frozen in time. But she's not the only thing moving in the midnight hour... the world is filled during that hour with darklings, ancient creatures that are the stuff of nightmares, and they all seem to hate Jessica with a bitter malice. She show more doesn't have to face them alone, however; there are other people like her who can see the midnight world. A group of fellow students, each of whom has a unique ability during the midnight time, will have to join forces in order to protect Jessica and figure out why she's so important that the darklings want her dead.

Review: Wonderfully creepy, fantastically clever, and totally addicting. This is not a book to pick up late at night when you should already be asleep; not only is it nearly impossible to put back down again, but when you finally do, you'll lay there awake, watching the clock creep slowly towards midnight, wondering what shadowy ancient nightmares are prowling just outside your window without your knowledge.

I think what I enjoyed most about this book was Westerfeld's world-building. In just a few quick-reading pages, he's able to bring the frozen midnight world to life, and fill it with the wonderful and the horrifying in quick succession. Actually, what I really enjoyed most about this book was the amount of thought that underlies all of the details of the worldbuilding. Even the most innocuous details often have a very specific reason behind them, buried just deep enough that you can feel deservedly clever when you figure it out. For example, who the hell sets their book in Bixby, Oklahoma? (Which, with a little Google Earth sleuthing, turns out to be a real place... although an important nearby location is not the middle of the badlands as it is in the book, but the backyard of a nice-looking suburban Tulsa home.) But Westerfeld's got his reasons, and they fit impeccably together with the rest of his story in a way that's very ingenious indeed. It also gives me hope that what I perceived as plot holes in this volume - for example, why are all the Midnighters teenagers? - are actually plot points that will be explained later in the series.

Westerfeld's prose style has never been my favorite - it's a little bit choppy and blunt in places, and occasionally the tone slips. (Seriously, at one point he uses the phrase "ouchy stuff" to describe Jessica's mom cleaning out some of her midnight-acquired scrapes. This is a book about teenagers, for teenagers. They can handle the words "hydrogen peroxide" or "Betadine.") Mostly, though, I didn't really notice the prose; I was so sucked-in to the story and the world that Westerfeld had created that I didn't care about anything else. He also handled the ending well; wrapping up the main plot threads to create a satisfying stopping point, but leaving enough of a teaser to make me anxious to pick up the next book. Overall, I tore through this book like there was no tomorrow, and will definitely be reading the sequels. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Fans of Westerfeld's other books, or of YA horror/fantasy/sci-fi more generally, will definitely enjoy this one, as will anyone who's looking for a fast-paced, absorbing, and appropriately creepy fall read. show less

This series sucked me right in from the beginning. Awesome mix of elements, nice word play and just all around spooky. I'm actually already a third of the way through the second book

I adored this series. It was dark, edgy, and thrilling. It stays away from the overused fantasy tropes that have merit, but can be incredibly tiring sometimes.

A secret hour that a few teens enjoy alone? Primordial predators that can be fended off with math and metal? Pure genius, and the recipe for a fantastic book.


Although I did find Jessica, the heroine, to be kind of a blank slate, it actually worked well in this series. It lets you take in the wild and wacky world she discovers, without getting caught up in the character. The other characters have more than enough personality to make up for Jess's lack, and their point of view is explored in the later books.

I read this book in one night, and moved on to the other books straight show more away. You will be swept up in this book, and it will keep you completely engaged right up to the last word. show less

I am suddenly so unreasonably invested in these kids these character dynamics are actually kind of bonkers. Also the entire premise goes hard I love you boring little towns who are really the nexus of chaos and secret times literally only five kids can access and wild powers and math and magic
I honestly don't think the characters are particularly well written but oh boy do they call to me specifically lol. mostly just very intrigued by what in the everloving world is happening over with the Rex Melissa dynamic hello?? + Melissa in GENERAL

--
from when I first discovered this book in 2021: This reminds me of Eighth Day pfft
(^ note from 2025: this is funny bc I had an online interaction where someone was asking about a book that was show more clearly eighth day but someone else said this book so I was like yea alright I really SHOULD read this and I come here and I've already offhandedly said this LMAO) show less