I picked up Midnight Strikes on a quiet Thursday evening with no real expectations just a cup of tea going cold on my desk and a soft spot for anything involving time loops. Four hours later, I was still reading, fully convinced that Zeba Shahnaz had written something genuinely special for her debut. This is the kind of book that grabs you by the collar at chapter one and simply refuses to let go.

Let me be honest with you: I review a lot of YA fantasy. Most of it blurs together after a while similar chosen-one plots, predictable love interests, worldbuilding that feels borrowed from somewhere else. Midnight Strikes breaks that pattern almost immediately. It does something that very few debut novels manage to pull off it takes a familiar concept, the time loop, and builds an entirely fresh and layered world around it.

What Is Midnight Strikes by Zeba Shahnaz Really About?

Seventeen year old Anaïs is a Proensan outsider attending the grandest event in the kingdom of Ivarea the royal anniversary ball. She has zero interest in charming nobles or catching the eye of the infamously roguish Prince Leo. She just wants to survive the night and go home. That plan falls apart spectacularly when, at the stroke of midnight, an explosion tears through the palace and kills everyone inside. Including her.

Then she wakes up. Same bedroom. Same morning. Same ball ahead of her. And nobody not a single soul remembers what happened. So Anaïs does what any sharp, quietly furious girl in her position would do: she starts investigating. She uses each loop to go a little deeper, pull one more thread, uncover one more secret about the court, the attack, and the blood magic her Proensan heritage carries. Loop by loop, night by night, she gets closer to the truth and closer to Leo, who turns out to be far more complicated than his reputation suggests.

If you love Best YA Time Travel Books You Need to Read, this one belongs at the top of that list. It earns its place not just because of the time loop mechanic, but because of what Shahnaz does with it she uses each iteration to deepen both the mystery and the characters, not just recycle the same events with minor tweaks.

The Writing: Beautiful, Dark, and Genuinely Gripping

Shahnaz has a voice that feels confident for a debut author precise where it needs to be, lyrical at exactly the right moments. There are passages in this book that I genuinely wanted to read twice. Not because they were confusing, but because they were that good. The prose manages to carry the weight of Anaïs dying repeatedly without it ever feeling cheap or gratuitous. That is genuinely difficult to pull off, and it speaks to how carefully Shahnaz calibrated every loop.

What I also appreciated, and what most reviews gloss over, is how the writing handles colonialism and identity. Anaïs’s experience as a Proensan in an Ivarean court is not background detail it is the emotional spine of the entire novel. The slights, the condescension, the way people look through her rather than at her it shapes every decision she makes and every risk she takes. The Spanish-influenced setting gives the world a distinct cultural texture that feels thought-out rather than decorative.

Anaïs: A Heroine Worth Rooting For

Anaïs is not flawless. She makes mistakes, misreads situations, and occasionally takes loops longer than she should to connect obvious dots. But that is exactly what makes her feel real. She does not have some superhuman loop-immunity that makes her invincible she has grit, frustration, and a very deep well of determination. Each time she wakes up in that bedroom, she finds a reason to try again. That is the emotional engine of the book, and it never stalls.

Publishers Weekly called out how her feelings of isolation and repeated grief are handled with genuine complexity. I agree with that entirely. There is a scene I will not spoil it — where Anaïs processes what it means to die over and over again and still choose to care about the people around her. It hit harder than I expected from a YA novel, and it stuck with me long after I finished the book.

The Romance: Slow-Burn Done Right (Mostly)

Prince Leo is the kind of love interest who reveals himself gradually, and that structure works beautifully within a time loop story. Because Anaïs meets him fresh each night while she carries all their history, there is a fascinating asymmetry to their dynamic. She knows things about him that he has not told her yet. She sees past the wayward prince act because she has already seen what is underneath it.

Is the romance fully developed? Honestly, not entirely. A few reviewers flag this, and they are not wrong the chemistry builds slowly, and some readers will want more payoff than the book delivers. But for me, the restraint felt intentional. This is a story about a girl solving a mystery while simultaneously learning to trust another person. The romance supports that arc rather than competing with it, which is a choice I respect even if it leaves you wanting one more scene at the end.

Where the Book Stumbles

No review worth reading pretends a book has no flaws, and Midnight Strikes has a couple worth knowing before you go in. The middle section drags. There is a stretch roughly around the halfway point where the loops feel repetitive in a way that works thematically but tests your patience as a reader. Anaïs circles the same suspects for a few too many iterations before a real breakthrough arrives. If you are not already invested in her as a character, this is the section where you might put the book down. Push through it. The back half earns the slog.

The ending also moves fast. After all that careful, deliberate pacing in the investigation, the resolution comes together in a rush. It is satisfying do not misunderstand me but readers who wanted more space to sit with the conclusion will feel slightly short-changed. That said, for a debut novel, the overall structure is remarkably controlled.

Who Should Read Midnight Strikes?

If you loved Groundhog Day as a concept but always wished it had more court intrigue and blood magic this is your book. If you are the kind of reader who devours mysteries alongside their romance, who wants a heroine who earns her wins through cleverness rather than luck, and who appreciates worldbuilding that actually says something about power and identity, you will love this.

It is also a genuinely strong recommendation for anyone new to YA fantasy. The premise is accessible, the pacing (outside that mid-book stretch) moves well, and Shahnaz’s writing is clear enough that you never feel lost in her world. For experienced YA readers, the layers of political and colonial commentary give it enough depth to stay interesting beyond the surface-level plot.

For further context on how time loops work across different YA subgenres, Barnes & Noble’s editorial team has a solid roundup of how the trope has evolved in YA fiction and Midnight Strikes sits comfortably among the best of them.