Where We Go at Night / Ikwo Ntekim / Book Review

WHERE WE GO AT NIGHT

Trixie Godfrey has no plans to leave Woods Crossing after graduation. No college for her. No gap year travel. No, Woods Crossing is all she'll ever have, all she'll ever need. How could she leave it behind, with a family estate she's set to inherit and the fae realm lurking just at the edge of the trees?

Not that Trixie's interacted much with the fae (or, as her Mama has always called them, those aberrations). Pops won't let her get too close, for one. He keeps promising to take her to the other side, but it's never happened. Which is why she can't leave now, with real adulthood looming. Once she's an adult, he won't be able to say no.

But on the night of her graduation, Trixie makes a mistake. She stays out too late. Wasn't her plan. Wasn't her fault. But she's stuck sneaking home way past curfew just to find the front door open... and her Pops in the kitchen, split wide open. Blood, guts, gore. And dead. Very dead...

THOUGHTS

This book had all the right elements and just nothing that quite hooked me. I do think it has the potential to be somebody's favorite fairy tale, but it just wasn't my favorite fairy tale.

PROS

Historical Immortals	It's not often you find books dealing with immortals (or near-immortals) that reckons with the history these immortals have lived through. Or if the book does ground its immortals in a historical context, the ramifications are... rarely reckoned with. See Jasper in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. But this book is very aware of its history, of the effect that place and race have on immortal beings living right next door. A Confederate uniform isn't a laughing matter in this book, and it isn't something to lightly glance over in a character backstory (*cough, cough* Stephenie Meyer...). There are ramifications. There are the echoes of history, of enslavement and the evils of those who fought for the right to enslave other human beings. This is a book that really takes that history and makes it part of the dark twists of Faerie, and that's so important. And so unique.
Fae Dealings	There are no good endings when it comes to fae dealings, and this book is no exception. But it's not a bad ending either. Not exactly. I don't want to spoil anything, especially because I really do mean the last few pages of this book when I talking about the end. Like, final page end. But trust that it is perfectly bittersweet, which is just how fae fruits should taste when you try to swallow them.
Crossroads of Destiny	We're dealing with big stakes here, of course. It's life and death and war and peace and quite a bit of senseless (in the way that all fae dealings are senseless) bloodshed. But there is a much more human component to Trixie's current predicament. She's at a real crossroads, her future before her now that high school is done. And she's not looking to leave her hometown, but most of her cohort is. Her friends are leaving, for bigger and brighter things (or, at least, different things). And that's a hard place to be at, a place for a lot of internal doubt and personal growth. I lovethis very real human moment that Trixie's struggling to reconcile herself with in the midst of all the fae goings-on.

CONS

Trixie isn't sure which side to fall on, because with the fae, nobody's exactly good. And so there's a lot of shifts in loyalty as the book progresses. And, frankly, it was too many shifts in Trixie's loyalty. The loyalties shifted too quickly for me to ever sink into one, to feel the plan we were working toward and/or to feel when Trixie was making the wrong choices. There was no tension in this book, because none of the loyalties were real to begin with. Betrayal, conniving, cunning twists, and too-smart-for-your-own-good plans are what really makes a book so full of fae shenanigans work, and this book didn't have that. It's all shifting sand, and it isn't very fun to read. Where was the plotting? Who was I rooting for? Too many balls in the air and nobody juggling.	Too Many Games Afoot
Because Trixie doesn't have consistent loyalties, because she doesn't really know what's going on, and because she doesn't exactly try to figure out what's going on, it was a little bit hard to get invested in her character. She's reserved as a character, holding a lot of her feelings close to the chest. Which is fine. But with so many moving pieces in this book, without a really and emotive strong character who I felt like I knew, through and through, it was difficult to get invested in this story. I had no through-line or touch point, and Trixie's own reserve doesn't help with that.	Character Consciousness
There's not really a plan in this book. There's not a goal. There are some ideas about what we should do next, but Trixie doesn't really commit to any of them. And that's fair. She's got a lot on her plate. But that kind of aimless meandering, being pushed and pulled by the currents, isn't all that exciting to read.	Aimless Wandering

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/10

Fans of Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale will like this new world of bittersweet fae dealings and the allure of the Other World. Those who liked Tracy Deonn's Legendborn will like the way this book mingles British folklore with truly Southern history.

Details Publisher: HarperCollins US Date: October 27, 2026 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.