The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)

Content Overview

Overall Content
Severity
2.1

Language

0.3/10

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

0.8/10

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

6.0/10

Violence, Weapons, Blood, Crime

2.5/10

Potentially Intense Themes

0.9/10

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

My Opinion

“A midnight lie. A kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment between night and morning.”

2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) This book releases in March 2020. I probably wouldn’t have finished this book if it wasn’t an ARC. First of all, the main character acted young. I looked multiple times to see if this is YA and I believe it’s not, regardless of what Goodreads says. The main character is 19 and it didn’t have a YA feel even though Rutkoski has previously written YA. However, Amazon labels it YA also so I will tag it as such.

I hated the romance in this book, it just fell flat. One character was very manipulative and one was very naive. It felt very forced and hard to believe because of this. The world Rutkoski created didn’t have enough answers, just too many questions. It was hard for me to picture. Instead of it being interesting I found myself feeling down and depressed during the descriptions.

There were definitely times I was interested in the book but those were few. I was hoping for a strong finish to bring up the rating but it fizzled and did a large splat of dullness.

I have read her books before and have really enjoyed them. This was a serious disappointment.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book does not come out until March of 2020.

The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)

Marie Rutkoski

Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules, and society’s pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and punishing. People of her low status are forbidden from sampling sweets or wearing colors. You either follow the rules or pay a tithe and suffer the consequences. Nirrim keeps her head down and a dangerous secret close to her chest. But then she encounters Sid, a rakish traveler from far away who whispers rumors that the High Caste possesses magic. Sid tempts Nirrim to seek that magic for herself. But to do that, Nirrim must surrender her old life. She must place her trust in this sly stranger who asks, above all, not to be trusted.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads

Check Goodreads to see the books ratings. 

Detailed Content Review

Language 

F***-

H***- 1

S***-

A**-

B****-

D***- 2

Bas****-

Religious Cursing-

J****-

Chr***-

G**- 9

L***-

Derogatory terms etc-

Maggot fly 

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

Two men take or drink something that gives them hallucinations.

People buy vials of liquid called dreams.

Two wine glasses are on a table with wine. 

A man gives a woman poison to kill someone. 

A certain wine is a truth elixir. It is served at a party. 

A man throws wine in a man’s face. 

A dust is like a drug that people ingest. 

A woman drinks liquor. 

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

A man kisses a woman. “We had kissed, and more, but I had put an end to that.”

A man touches a woman’s lip then kisses her. “His mouth was hungry at my neck…I could be with him again… he loves me.”

A man talks of “other ways to pay” and a woman knows he means rape. 

A man claims to have slept with someone’s wife. The husband walked in and knew that man pleasured his wife more than he did so he had him arrested. 

“I wasn’t sure what a woman did with a woman in bed, but I knew that it didn’t make children.”

A woman lays her head against a man’s naked chest, his hand on her naked shoulder.

“His hands slid down my back. I knew what he wanted, though he didn’t ask for it, and it seemed like something he deserved, so I gave it to him. Sometimes people want things so badly you feel like it’s your obligation to give it. I knew that was wrong, yet I had gone to bed with (him) anyway.”

A woman unbuttons a woman’s dress and realizes she likes it. 

A man kisses a woman twice. 

A woman takes herbs to prevent pregnancy. 

A woman kisses a man hard, holding him tight and running her fingers through his hair. 

“Two men stood close together in a corner of the ballroom. One stroked a finger across the other’s mouth.” A woman looks on, jealous. 

“She kissed me. Her mouth was hungry on mine, on my neck. Her hand fisted in my hair. I pushed off her jacket…her teeth on my lower lip, her thigh hard between mine. I tugged her by her belt toward me. I wanted the bed, I wanted her to press me down into it.” One woman tugged down the other woman’s dress with her teeth. 

“…so that I wouldn’t be tempted to touch myself, which would only remind me of how I wanted her hands, not mine.”

A mother cries when she finds her daughter sexually involved with another young woman. 

“She turned to glide her mouth over my fingers. “Please,” I said, and pulled her toward me, my mouth hungry for hers. I kissed her. Her lips opened beneath mine. She made a low sound in her throat, and then her hands were on me, finding the shape of my body, its delicate spots, its needy ones. She unbuttoned the top crystal button of my dress. Her tongue lightly touched my lower lip and I knew I would let her do anything. She undid all the buttons, her fingers dipping lightly beneath the silk to touch my skin, until the dress fell…She knelt before me, her lips and tongue on my belly. “Please don’t stop,” I said. Her mouth went lower. My hands twisted in her hair.”

 “Her hand slid up my thigh, and in fact I did not leave her bed, not right away, not for some time.” Sex implied. 

Sexual references are throughout. Talking about one making the other shudder, vague innuendos etc. 

“Her mouth glided down my neck. Her teeth nipped my throat. Her hand slipped into my dress pocket and traced patterns through the thin lining against my thigh.” They kiss and one yearns for more. 

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

A class of people tend to disappear. They never make it out of prisons. They are sometimes taken in the middle of the night. A mother wonders if her child was taken as tithe?

One woman is arrested for wearing makeup. One of her eyes is taken as tithe. Blood is taken as tithe. These things are given to high born. 

When a woman tried to leave the city, she was caught and sentenced to death. 

A woman kicks a man in the face. He falls and hits his head, blood pooling. She runs. He dies.

A woman is arrested.

A young girl is punished for what another girl does. She gets her palm slashed once. 

A woman smacks a woman with an oil lamp burning her. 

People circle a creature and stab at it with knives. 

A woman grabs a woman by the hair. 

A story tells of a god smothering a baby with a blanket. 

A woman puts poison in a man’s tea and he drinks. 

With magic, a man takes a woman’s sight, her strength and her air. 

A man is said to have killed his brother. 

Potentially Intense Themes

In an orphanage, babies are kept in cribs most of their first years so walking is difficult. 

A young girl sleeps in the same bed as her sick friend. When she wakes she is cold and hard and dead. 

A newborn is placed in a baby box for unwanted babies. 

A woman steals a baby in the night. 

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

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