by Andrew Hedglin
As a 32 year-old man, I realize that I’m probably not the person who’s supposed to be writing this post about this delightful new YA book by Jeff Zentner. I am certainly not the intended primary audience. But sometimes a person wants to read about people who are not exactly like himself, and I was young, once, giving me as good a frame of reference as required. And I was the person who encountered this book. So I shall tell about it.
Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee is about two teenage girls, Delia Wilkes and Josie Howard, who are trying to navigate the end of their high school while hosting a horror-movie-of-the-week TV show on a public access channel in Jackson, Tennessee.
Delia and her mother, both struggling with depression, were abandoned ten years earlier by Delia’s father, who left behind only an extensive collection of cheesy horror tapes in his wake. Delia loves the movies for two reasons: first, they remind her of him. Second, Delia keeps the flame for all the mediocre people of the world, “the ones who try their hardest to make something beautiful, something great, something that someone will remember and talk about when they’re gone–and they come up short. And not by a little bit. By a lot.” Delia, an average student, feels a great kinship with these people.
She does create one thing, though, by force of will–Midnite Matinee–in the hopes that her father will see it while flipping channels one day and be proud of her, or regret leaving, or…something.
Delia’s co-host, best friend, and general partner-in-crime is Josie Howard. Josie has dreamed of a career in television since as long as she could remember. She seems, to most people, to shine just a little bit brighter than Delia. She’s headed to four-year university instead of community college, and attracts all the boys she and Delia meet together, including one Lawson Vargas, a MMA fighter who goes to a different school, and turns out to be deeper than at initial glance. Josie is extremely loyal to Delia, but her parents are pressuring her to pursue an internship at the Food Network in Knoxville if she is serious about her TV dreams.
But Delia has a plan. The hosts of Midnite Matinee have been invited to ShiverCon in Orlando, and have a chance to meet the influential Jack Divine, who’s as famous in the horror-hosting world as a person can be. Maybe if Divine can help Midnite Matinee reach a certain level of success, Josie wouldn’t have to leave Jackson to become famous on TV. Furthermore, Delia has hired a private detective to track down her missing father, who just happens to live in Boca Raton, a few hours south of Orlando. Can Delia possibly confront both her past, through her father, and her future, in Jack Divine, in one trip?
Delia, Josie, and Lawson are extremely vivid, charming characters with clear motivations facing real change in a pivotal time in their lives. Delia and Josie’s sassy humor gives welcome levity to the big decisions they have to face. Their stakes never feel forced (although there is one somewhat cartoonish episode during the Florida part of the adventure), and their reactions feel perfectly natural. Like Delia and Josie themselves, mostly I wished that their story together wouldn’t end.
If you want to take that journey with Delia and Josie, we here at Lemuria have two great ways for you to do it. First, we still have some signed first editions available at our online store.
Second, if you’re like me, you like to listen to audiobooks in addition to reading, because then you have twice the time available for books. But boxed audiobooks are inconvenient and expensive, so you’ve probably been paying for digital audiobooks an Audible subscription, right?
Well, how about supporting your local independent bookstore instead? With libro.fm, now you can do both. Click the banner below to begin. By selecting Lemuria as your home store, every audiobook you purchase helps support us, your local bookstore, instead of a huge corporate monolith. We sure would appreciate it. And if you’re thinking about listening to Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, narrators Phoebe Strole as Delia and Sophie Amoss as Josie make a great book even better.
Comments are closed.