What secrets lie behind the Midnight Door? Katrina Monroe’s haunting tale of sisterhood and trauma

What if the scariest thing isn’t what waits behind a mysterious door, but what happens when you never speak of it again? Katrina Monroe’s Through the Midnight Door is a genre-bending novel that slips between the psychological and the supernatural, the traumatic and the magical, all while anchoring itself in the emotionally raw terrain of sisterhood. It’s eerie and unsettling in the best way—but also heartbreakingly intimate.

Years after the Finch sisters dared to unlock the doors in a seemingly impossible abandoned house in their dying hometown, the youngest, Claire, is found dead inside it. Her death pulls Meg and Esther—both estranged and damaged in different ways—back into each other’s lives. They’re not just grieving a sister; they’re unraveling what really happened that summer and what they never told each other.

That silence is central to the novel. Even though Meg, Esther, and Claire once had a secret club, even though they all experienced something inexplicable behind those doors, they didn’t share what they saw. This aspect of the story is both compelling and maddening. As someone with sisters myself, I found it strange that they wouldn’t immediately blurt out their horrors, needing someone to say, “me too.” Instead, each one carried her trauma alone, and that isolation shaped their entire lives.

Claire’s secret relationship with the boy who first showed them the house adds another layer of mystery—and frustration. Why did she hide it? Why did they all choose silence over solidarity?

Monroe’s writing is vivid and atmospheric, especially in scenes set within the decaying house. The building becomes almost a character in itself: a liminal space where time, grief, and reality bend. This is magical realism, yes—but also a story about how trauma fractures memory and relationships. The result is something that feels both grounded and otherworldly.

Some readers may wish the story had leaned more heavily into the supernatural horror or gone full tilt into psychological thriller. It walks a middle line, not quite delivering jump scares or major twists, but instead creating a slow, lingering dread. For me, that worked. The horror here isn’t just in the haunted house. It’s in what festers when we don’t talk, in the weight of inherited trauma, in the fear of becoming what we’ve lost.

The issue of mental health is woven into the narrative, especially through the lens of OCD and suicide. While these threads could have been explored more deeply, Monroe integrates them with empathy and nuance. Claire’s death doesn’t just serve the plot—it’s a reckoning with a family’s long history of avoidance and pain.

Ultimately, Through the Midnight Door is less about what’s on the other side of the keyhole and more about the people who turned the lock. It’s a novel for readers who love emotionally complex horror, who find the eerie and the intimate equally compelling, and who understand that sometimes the most terrifying hauntings are the ones we carry inside us.

Have you read Through the Midnight Door? What did you think was behind each sister’s silence? Let’s talk about it—drop your thoughts in the comments.

Related Content

• Interview: Author Katrina Monroe talks hauntings, generational trauma, and sisterhood in Through the Midnight Door (Evans Funeral Parlor)
• 7 minutes in book heaven with Katrina Monroe and Through The Midnight Door (This Queer Book)
• Q&A: Katrina Monroe, author of They Drown Our Daughters (The Nerd Daily)
• Review: Through the Midnight Door (Just Read It Already)

Now available in print and on Kindle!

Now that Jack has been forced to reflect on everything he has to lose, he resolves to do better. He’s determined to spend more time at home with his family and repair the relationships that have suffered over the years while he’s been so focused on work. But as Callie’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jack realizes he has a lot more room to improve than he realized – and it might be too late to save his daughter after all.

For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.