What do you think?
Rate this book
Into That Good Night
A group of misfit kids become inseparable friends after a girl they love is murdered in the woods outside of town. When a boy they believe to be the killer begins to terrorize them, the group decides to stop him by any means, and the novel takes a grim turn.
The story follows Doug Horolez, a talentless boy hopelessly in love with his only friend, E. Summerson. That’s the good news. When E.’s sister is murdered in the woods behind town, Doug joins a group of junior high pariahs—led by an ill and eerily charismatic boy—to solve the girl's mysterious death and to prove his devotion. But as bonds within the group deepen, their methods become cultish and vengeful. Doug must then find his voice and act before the price to be loved becomes unspeakable violence.
Into That Good Night is a coming-of-age novel and literary thriller that investigates recurrent mysteries—loss, loneliness, and the precarious desire to belong.
The story follows Doug Horolez, a talentless boy hopelessly in love with his only friend, E. Summerson. That’s the good news. When E.’s sister is murdered in the woods behind town, Doug joins a group of junior high pariahs—led by an ill and eerily charismatic boy—to solve the girl's mysterious death and to prove his devotion. But as bonds within the group deepen, their methods become cultish and vengeful. Doug must then find his voice and act before the price to be loved becomes unspeakable violence.
Into That Good Night is a coming-of-age novel and literary thriller that investigates recurrent mysteries—loss, loneliness, and the precarious desire to belong.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published June 5, 2018
16 people are currently reading
1468 people want to read
About the author
Crystal Odelle
3 books56 followersAuthor of Trans Studies, Crystal Odelle (they / she) is a storyteller of trans / polyamorous / whore practice, writing and revising into the desire for something like a life.
Their stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Foglifter, Split Lip Magazine, smoke and mold, Apogee, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Lambda Literary fellow and Tin House Scholar, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction. Her writing and performances trouble the divide between fiction and reality toward liberation.
She serves as chapbooks editor at Newfound, a hybrid reader for Abode Press, and academic and administrative coordinator for the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at WashU.
Their stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Foglifter, Split Lip Magazine, smoke and mold, Apogee, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Lambda Literary fellow and Tin House Scholar, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction. Her writing and performances trouble the divide between fiction and reality toward liberation.
She serves as chapbooks editor at Newfound, a hybrid reader for Abode Press, and academic and administrative coordinator for the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at WashU.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
March 21, 2018
I’m a huge fan of this novel. It’s dark and intense, with great narrative drive and a fascinating cast of weird, macabre woods-obsessed kids. I especially love how the book explores that strange liminal space between childhood play and consequential adult behavior. When I pick up a book, I want to connect to characters and feel something. This book succeeds—with a great plot!—and then some.
April 24, 2018
Into That Good Night is one of the most impressive debuts I've read. I think it is one of those rare books--the total home run--a book with a plot that holds your interest, language that you want to read aloud, and important themes that probe the big questions about life, about what it means to be human. This is one of those books that I think any type of reader can pick up and thoroughly enjoy. Easily going to be one of the best books of 2018.
March 22, 2018
Into That Good Night defies expectations--expectations of genre, language, and how a character (or person) "Should be." Like a sinister take on The Breakfast Club, ITGN, creates meaningful bonds between unlikely characters as they try to reconcile their communal goal with their individual, adolescent longing.
The cast of ITGN, collectively form an organism that reflects our complicated inner struggles with the social and ethical decisions we face daily. Struggles that we sometimes forget, as adults, can emerge very early in life. Despite the youth of these characters, they have a depth of awareness that makes them dynamic and interesting to follow through the unusual situation they face: solving a murder.
The book poses a compelling question, one many of us may have forgotten asking ourselves at one time: How old is old enough to know so much?
The cast of ITGN, collectively form an organism that reflects our complicated inner struggles with the social and ethical decisions we face daily. Struggles that we sometimes forget, as adults, can emerge very early in life. Despite the youth of these characters, they have a depth of awareness that makes them dynamic and interesting to follow through the unusual situation they face: solving a murder.
The book poses a compelling question, one many of us may have forgotten asking ourselves at one time: How old is old enough to know so much?
September 17, 2018
This book was a bit dense, yet with a fascinating cast of characters that I wanted to stick with to the end. The case doesn't get completely solved, which usually frustrates me as a mystery fan. It felt refreshing here. I hope this is the start of a series!
November 30, 2018
First off, I love literary teen-detective novels like Boy Detective Fails and shows like The Venture Brothers. If you like those, you would probably like this too. I thought Levis's book was a brutally honest portrayal of all the fears and insecurities junior high kids have--honestly it's a terrible time for everyone, whether or not you are trying to solve a murder. The complex friendships between the individuals in the group is at the core of this novel, though the murder investigation was page-turning, with spooky woods and even some Satanic Panic thrown in.
March 22, 2018
Into that good night by author Levis Keltner is a coming of age crime/thriller book. It was overall a great, pretty fast paced thriller with lots to keep you guessing during. I'm actually happy I've found this book, I think my 15 year old niece is wanting to read this genre. It'll be a good start for her.
September 16, 2018
***I won this through a goodreads giveaway***
This was a compelling story that focused on a group of teenagers attempting to solve and make sense of a crime. The plot was well-written, with beautiful language, and moments that made you stop and ponder your own beliefs. My favorite parts of the novel centered around the moments that focused on Doug, John, and Emily. To me, their relationship dynamic was the most compelling part of the novel. I loved reading about the nuances between them and the ways in which each would grow and learn to make sense of the world around them and each other. There are a lot of great literary elements in the writing. I think this would definitely appeal to the voracious adolescent reader who is looking for a more intense reading challenge. The author did a great job of representing that time when you are a still a child, but old enough to start understanding the adult aspects of the world around you.
This was a compelling story that focused on a group of teenagers attempting to solve and make sense of a crime. The plot was well-written, with beautiful language, and moments that made you stop and ponder your own beliefs. My favorite parts of the novel centered around the moments that focused on Doug, John, and Emily. To me, their relationship dynamic was the most compelling part of the novel. I loved reading about the nuances between them and the ways in which each would grow and learn to make sense of the world around them and each other. There are a lot of great literary elements in the writing. I think this would definitely appeal to the voracious adolescent reader who is looking for a more intense reading challenge. The author did a great job of representing that time when you are a still a child, but old enough to start understanding the adult aspects of the world around you.
August 4, 2018
Rating: 3.0/5.0
The story starts revolving around three teenagers, Doug, John, and Emily. They come together when Emily's sister Erika gets killed to what is rumored to be a satanic sacrifice. The town is devastated and the police are unable to solve this case. So Emily who prefers to be called E, along with John who is the favorite of everyone in the school but suffers from cancer and Doug form a group to go and search the woods to find some clues or catch the killer. Soon other characters will join them in their mission.
The story was decent, but it concentrated on the relationships between the characters more than the mystery itself. I liked it better when the story was more about the three characters. I felt it watered down when other characters joined them. I appreciate it that the writer despite dealing with what you can call a young adult mystery he tried to make his writing style leaning towards literary. Sometimes I felt the dialogues were longer than necessary in some situations or the events were slow a bit. Overall I give Into That Good Night a good 3.0 stars out of 5.0.
I grabbed a free copy of this book when it was available on Netgalley's Read Now section and this is my honest unbiased review.
The story starts revolving around three teenagers, Doug, John, and Emily. They come together when Emily's sister Erika gets killed to what is rumored to be a satanic sacrifice. The town is devastated and the police are unable to solve this case. So Emily who prefers to be called E, along with John who is the favorite of everyone in the school but suffers from cancer and Doug form a group to go and search the woods to find some clues or catch the killer. Soon other characters will join them in their mission.
The story was decent, but it concentrated on the relationships between the characters more than the mystery itself. I liked it better when the story was more about the three characters. I felt it watered down when other characters joined them. I appreciate it that the writer despite dealing with what you can call a young adult mystery he tried to make his writing style leaning towards literary. Sometimes I felt the dialogues were longer than necessary in some situations or the events were slow a bit. Overall I give Into That Good Night a good 3.0 stars out of 5.0.
I grabbed a free copy of this book when it was available on Netgalley's Read Now section and this is my honest unbiased review.
December 6, 2018
Mysterious, dark, and captivating.
December 30, 2018
Deep, dark and compelling. Beautifully written. A nostalgic, coming-of-age story mixed with mystery, a book for all ages.
July 19, 2018
A 14-year old boy learns about the friend-zone for 300 pages.
February 11, 2020
It took me a little bit to get into this one. I want to label it a "slow starter", but as Keltner introduces two extremely dramatic plot elements within the first few pages (a hometown hero diagnosed with cancer, and a twelve-year-old girl brutally murdered in the woods), I don't think that's completely accurate. Rather, I think it *felt* like a slow starter to me because so much of the story's beginning focuses on everyman-loser protagonist Doug and his unrequited nice-guy crush on his best friend E., the older sister of the murder victim. Initially I found Doug's perspective both tedious (I must have read a thousand works of fiction about essentially this exact sad-sack dorky straight dude, I thought to myself) and frustrating, given the promising set-up and the fact that both E. and John Walker, the baseball star with cancer, immediately leapt off the page as unique, fascinating, believably odd and precocious teenage characters. I questioned whether Doug was even necessary to the story, and wished it had been told from E.'s point of view instead, since I thought this would be much more interesting and also make more narrative sense.
However, Keltner surprised me. As the book continues, it transforms into a psychological exploration and deconstruction of these three characters and several others, and a recurring theme is that people who appear to fit shallow "types" on the surface are always much more complicated than they seem. This sounds trite, and it is when condensed into a single declarative statement, but Keltner conveys it expertly, through a series of increasingly high-stakes dilemmas for his cast of junior high misfits, and through revelations both poignant and disturbing. What begins as a murder mystery ends as an existential, bittersweet-bordering-on-tragic coming of age novel told from multiple perspectives, one that's both empathetic and insightful about the ways teenagers are broken by the world, and refreshingly unwilling to tie everything up in a neat bow at the end, to seek shelter in the kind of sentimentality that offers easy comfort, predictable answers,"it'll get better" platitudes. (That bravery, and that dedication to exploring characters' most unpleasant and unsettling nuances, also means Keltner is able to get away with a climactic moment towards the end of the book that would be laughably saccharine in almost any other work of literature-- here, it simply seems honest, and wise.)
Keltner also has a great hand with low-key observational humor, especially in the form of succinct, ultra-specific descriptions. For instance, at a school assembly, "so many junior high kids crammed into the bleachers gave the gymnasium the palpable moisture and stink of steamed hotdogs, a beefy, salty odor unique to pubescent youth of the American Midwest."
However, Keltner surprised me. As the book continues, it transforms into a psychological exploration and deconstruction of these three characters and several others, and a recurring theme is that people who appear to fit shallow "types" on the surface are always much more complicated than they seem. This sounds trite, and it is when condensed into a single declarative statement, but Keltner conveys it expertly, through a series of increasingly high-stakes dilemmas for his cast of junior high misfits, and through revelations both poignant and disturbing. What begins as a murder mystery ends as an existential, bittersweet-bordering-on-tragic coming of age novel told from multiple perspectives, one that's both empathetic and insightful about the ways teenagers are broken by the world, and refreshingly unwilling to tie everything up in a neat bow at the end, to seek shelter in the kind of sentimentality that offers easy comfort, predictable answers,"it'll get better" platitudes. (That bravery, and that dedication to exploring characters' most unpleasant and unsettling nuances, also means Keltner is able to get away with a climactic moment towards the end of the book that would be laughably saccharine in almost any other work of literature-- here, it simply seems honest, and wise.)
Keltner also has a great hand with low-key observational humor, especially in the form of succinct, ultra-specific descriptions. For instance, at a school assembly, "so many junior high kids crammed into the bleachers gave the gymnasium the palpable moisture and stink of steamed hotdogs, a beefy, salty odor unique to pubescent youth of the American Midwest."
October 21, 2019
Levis Keltner’s debut novel, INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT, is a masterful, literary coming-of-age thriller. This story follows Doug Horolez, a boy on the fringe, and his small tribe of misfits who assemble to set out to solve a murder. This novel is a thrill of beautiful prose, spot-on character study, and tightly woven plot. And hold on to your seats when a dark corner is turned.
October 31, 2018
This is a coming of age crime/thriller book. It is YA and therefore perfect for those just coming into the thriller genre as young readers. I read this first then passed my kindle over to my son so he could read. I think it was fast paced and kept us guessing the whole time. While it wasn't mind blowing, the relationship between the kids was fantastic. I loved reading about them. The dynamic was so intensely compelling and they made this book for me.
I did ask the preteen what he thought. His answer... "I liked it." I call that a win with the preteen age. Three words is more than I get some days.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.
I did ask the preteen what he thought. His answer... "I liked it." I call that a win with the preteen age. Three words is more than I get some days.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.
June 13, 2018
a girl is murdered and a group of her former classmates decide to try to figure out who did it and everyone goes kind of crazy and a bunch of confusing plotpoints pop up and are never explained and there's no real ending. this was a mess. aside from the story itself being a frustratingly muddled bundle of nothingness, the writing style was obnoxious to the point of having to read sentences multiple times in order to decipher what the fuck the author was attempting to say. don't bother with this one. 1/5.
August 23, 2019
I loved this! It brought me right back to the awkwardness of middle school, with being an outcast while also wanting to fit in. The story took turns that I definitely wasn’t expecting. The tone had the right amount of darkness and mystery to it. This is a very unique book. I highly recommend.
November 18, 2022
Glad it over!! Took me forever to get through. Got weirder and weirder not in a good way. Mystery not solved at the end but the biggest mystery of all what 8th grader acts or talks or thinks like these CHILDREN. Yes they are children, not “children about to turn into adults” as some reviewers state. Disappointed but surprised myself with the ability to actually read this whole thing. Attempted to be deep and dark, but really just super weird and creepy that this was about 8th graders performing freaky rituals in the woods….
September 4, 2019
A difficult story to follow as it is a genre I generally do not read. The level of vocabulary , the character development and the twists of the plot line would be a match for freshmen American lit classes. As shared , I must agree that the story can be best described as THE BREAKFAST CLUB "meets" STRANGER THINGS .
October 3, 2018
great book thanks for letting me read it.
June 2, 2021
Pointing to the exact moment one isn’t a kid anymore, learning to imagine others complexly, plus a creepy and suspenseful “will they or won’t they?” thread makes for quite the story, and one that I imagine will stick with me for a long while.
September 11, 2019
Nuanced, dark, and full of teen drama, this is a fun mystery story written with aplomb. Yes, it has a kind of 'literary' style, combining subtle explorations of relationship dynamics with style and story. I really appreciate the "Breakfast Club meets Stranger Things" take other reviewers have agreed upon. Looking forward to Keltner's next book!
Read
February 6, 2022https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023580
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024411 ebook
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/ar... publisher
https://sample-39c803023c2072c25f3694... exerpt
Found this author (on 2022 0206 su 21:13 cet) as friend of https://DariusFrasure.com , who on his turn is a friend/follower of https://PeterKingsley.org .
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024411 ebook
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/ar... publisher
https://sample-39c803023c2072c25f3694... exerpt
Found this author (on 2022 0206 su 21:13 cet) as friend of https://DariusFrasure.com , who on his turn is a friend/follower of https://PeterKingsley.org .
April 12, 2021
There were some really great moments where Keltner seemed like he knew what he was doing with his words, but for the most part, the writing itself was just a weird mishmash of too-formal language with weird little hints of childish "kid" language thrown in. (Did anyone else find it jarring every time literal shit was brought up in the middle of what could have been a perfectly fine description? No? Just me?)
The story had very little substance and was filled to the brim with characters and subplots that I just couldn't bring myself to care about. I started skimming over entire paragraphs about halfway through, struggling to make it to the big reveal and finally find out what the hell happened to Erika.......only to never find out what actually happened to Erika beyond some vague implications and to have what little plot there was dissolve into absolute nonsense at the end.
A lot of wasted potential. Not worth the read.
The story had very little substance and was filled to the brim with characters and subplots that I just couldn't bring myself to care about. I started skimming over entire paragraphs about halfway through, struggling to make it to the big reveal and finally find out what the hell happened to Erika.......only to never find out what actually happened to Erika beyond some vague implications and to have what little plot there was dissolve into absolute nonsense at the end.
A lot of wasted potential. Not worth the read.
November 14, 2018
I am not sure how I feel about this book. Basically a young woman is killed in the forest and a group of misfits, including the victim’s sister, band together to investigate. But really all they are doing is hanging around the murder site. And the reader doesn’t get much actual information about the crime itself. Everything is filtered through the kids’ point of view. Add to this a writing style that was too formal and impersonal for the story and perspective. I felt the author should have made a choice: young adult book about unlikely friendships or literary discourse on youth and coming of age. Somehow this attempt to combine both missed the mark for me.
A copy of this book was provided by NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
A copy of this book was provided by NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
November 24, 2024
Note: the book I have has Levis Keltner as the author. By either name, the author is trans. I found this interesting.
This book had a bit of a Lord of the Flies edge to it, although it was not at all derivative. I can't say that I particularly liked it, but it was one that I wanted to see how it ended, and I did get drawn into the plot. It's a book left over from my last time on Alex Committee. The cast of characters was interesting. The book was also an object lesson as to how easy it is to be drawn into something you really don't understand or think hard about--something too scarily true.
This book had a bit of a Lord of the Flies edge to it, although it was not at all derivative. I can't say that I particularly liked it, but it was one that I wanted to see how it ended, and I did get drawn into the plot. It's a book left over from my last time on Alex Committee. The cast of characters was interesting. The book was also an object lesson as to how easy it is to be drawn into something you really don't understand or think hard about--something too scarily true.
July 2, 2021
Into That Good Night leads directly into the dark coming-of-age territory of Doug, E., and John after the violent, mysterious murder of E.'s sister. Author Lev Keltner introduces a world of kids on the fringe, wandering the deepest woods, their innocence tipped upside-down. Recalling the suspense of the series "Stranger Things" and the film "Super 8," the novel surprises and stuns, raising questions about the emotional drift of middle-schoolers into places supernatural and strange.
November 9, 2022
Into that Good Night is a gripping debut novel that pulls the reader into the liminal space of literary dread. This psychological thriller centers on recognizable coming-of-age themes that belie a deeper place of discomfort, regarding loyalty, belonging, and the potential for violence. Into that Good Night is a book for mature readers and will appeal to fans of The Lord of the Flies, Stand by Me, and Stranger Things. This is the dark heart of the Breakfast Club.
March 2, 2022
DNF stopped about half way. I enjoyed the set-up and the writing style but I just couldn't get into this book! I read about half the book and it felt like nothing had happened! This book was no what I was expecting it to be. I do no like coming of age stories so this novel just didn't work for me.
October 3, 2018
This book was decidedly not for me.
January 28, 2019
DNF. Could not get into the story at all.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews