Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

“Misery loved company and made strange bedfellows.”

In the words of Lorde, “What was that?”

I’m really not sure how I feel about this one—or what I was supposed to take from it. But I can say this much upfront: if you’re going into Graveyard Shift expecting horror (as I absolutely did), you’re going to want to adjust those expectations immediately. There’s absolutely nothing scary here. A little weird? Sure. Some light body horror and a bit of unethical science? Yeah. But chills? Dread? Impending spooky-season vibes? Not really.

It’s the definition of wasted potential. Sure, the premise is eerie enough: five friends, a midnight meeting, a freshly unearthed grave on a university campus. It’s a setup that screams thrills and dark academia chills. Add in a mysterious rash of violent attacks and a mounting pile of dead rats, and it should have been a page turner. Instead, it’s a frustratingly hollow novella that feels more like an abandoned Scooby Doo outline than a finished story.

The plot itself goes nowhere fast. What starts with intrigue quickly spirals into confusing science jargon, dead-end dialogue, and endless Googling. There’s no rising tension, no emotional stakes, no payoff. It’s especially frustrating because the atmosphere is there, and we know Rio is capabable of create a mood after the perfection that was If We Were Villains. But this story just doesn’t hold up. The ending lands with a dull thud, silly and anticlimactic.

There’s the skeleton of something in here. It could perhaps work as a tighter, more developed short story, maybe. But as a novella, Graveyard Shift reads like an undercooked idea stretched for marketability. The writing is competent enough, but it groans under the weight of clichés and underdeveloped characters.

One star for the premise, and one for the prose. Beyond that, it’s all damp dirt and wasted graveyard air.

RATING

★★