Review: THE LONG NIGHT, Christian White

• 
  this edition read as an e-book on Libby through my local library
  
• Publisher: Affirm Press (October 28, 2025)
• Length: 304 pages
• ISBN13: 9781923046795  

Synopsis

Em has lived a quiet life with her complicated mother and is now looking for love and a potential escape from her small hometown. When a masked man kidnaps her in the dark of night, though, she is drawn into a terrifying world.

Jodie has been trying to forget a troubling time in her life, pouring her trauma into her work and out of her mind. Until one night her daughter is kidnapped and Jodie is dragged back into the violence.

As Em and Jodie race into the darkness, the agony of the past rushes up to meet them. It will take all their devotion and courage to escape this night alive.

Bold, vivid and heart-racingly intense, The Long Night is the darkest and most exhilarating novel yet from bestselling author Christian White.  

My Take

SPOILER ALERT 

I found this a difficult read and my low rating is based on the fact that I found it so hard to work out what had happened. There are two time frames, and Jodie is the connecting thread. I know the author was making me work hard to put it all together. I ended up feeling that there were some plot threads that had not been satisfactorily resolved.

My rating: 3.5 

I've also read

4.4, THE NOWHERE CHILD

4.5, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 

4.6, WILD PLACE

4.9, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW  

5.0, THE LEDGE

Review: THE LEDGE, Christian White

• 
  this edition published in 2024 by Affirm Press
• ISBN 9-781923-0226829
  
• 325 pages 

Synopsis (publisher)

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.

It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected. 

My Take

The blurb is right - this novel is mind-bending. Just as you thought you had it all worked out, there  is another solution. As you protest but... but .... but, you concede it is all there in plain sight.  

This is his best novel yet.

At the end, think about the discussion questions provided after the novel finishes.

My rating: 5.0

I've also read

• 4.4, THE NOWHERE CHILD
• 4.5, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 
• 4.6, WILD PLACE
• 4.9, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 

Review: THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW, Christian White

• 
  this edition published 2020 by Affirm Press
• ISBN 978-1-925972-75-7
  
• 334 page 
• previous review
  

Synopsis (Publisher)

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW is a mystery/thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband's secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she's forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

Brilliant and beguiling, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW takes you to a cliff edge and asks the question: how well do we really know the people we love? 

My Take

I previously read this over 3 years ago, and now I am re-reading it for discussion with my U3A Crime Fiction group. 

I think now that, when I read it earlier, I seriously under-estimated the clever plot construct that the author builds in. I had forgotten the nature of this twist and began making notes because I actually thought the author had slipped up. And then of course I discovered that he hadn't!

This is an Australian story, set on an island off the coast of Victoria, a popular summer holiday destination, connected to the mainland by a ferry.

What would you do to protect your children? Something happened to John Keddie as a rebellious teenager that would stay with him for the rest of his life - affecting his mental health, giving him nightmares, and memories he can never escape. Eventually the dam overflows.

My Rating: 4.9

Previous reviews

• 4.4, THE NOWHERE CHILD
• 4.5, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 
• 4.6, WILD PLACE

 

Review: THE NOWHERE CHILD, Christian White

 Once again I am using my iPad to record this review so I am hoping that I will eventually be able to update this review so it looks more like my usual format.

I originally read this soon after its original publication in 2019. My earlier review can be located in this blog if you search for it. I have re-read it as part of the list of books we are tackling with my U3A Crime Fiction group. I must confess that I seem to have enjoyed it more this time around, certainly my rating is just a tad higher.

Originally I read it on my kindle as a pre-publication preview from Net Galley. This time I have read it as a hard copy from my local library. Perhaps in e-book format I read it too quickly to appreciate things that I enjoyed this time. 

This was Christian White’s debut title. The theme is an unusual one - an abducted child identified 30 years later by her older brother who has been searching for her almost all his life. The format is unusual in that there are two time frames, current time, and the time the two year old disappeared. And there are really two narrators - Kim/Sammy who was abducted, and then third party narration that tells the main story. 

True to form, I remembered clearly the first part of the book, and then I’d forgotten how the plot resolved. 

So what questions am I going to pose for my U3A readers?

• First of all, the standard ones: did they enjoy the story? What did they like most? What least?
• How plausible did they find the story? What questions did the author pose in his plot?
• What parts of the plot stood out for them? Which characters?
• Was everybody happy when Stu managed to eventually track his little sister down? Who wasn’t?
• Does it feel like an Australian novel? Why so? Or why not? In other words, if you didn’t know the author was an Australian what clues are there to his nationality?
• The author uses some really creepy settings. How effective were they?
• Was Dean wise in returning to the USA? 
• Did the ending take them by surprise? What strands of the plot had they worked out?

My rating: 4.6

Review: WILD PLACE, Christian White

• 
  this edition published by Affirm Press Australia 2021
• 325 pages
  
• ISBN 978-1-922626-10-3

Synopsis (publisher)

In the summer of 1989, a local teen goes missing from the idyllic Australian suburb of Camp Hill. As rumours of Satanic rituals swirl, schoolteacher Tom Witter becomes convinced he holds the key to the disappearance. When the police won’t listen, he takes matters into his own hands with the help of the missing girl’s father and a local neighbourhood watch group.

But as dark secrets are revealed and consequences to past actions are faced, Tom learns that the only way out of the darkness is to walk deeper into it. Wild Place peels back the layers of suburbia, exposing what’s hidden underneath – guilt, desperation, violence – and attempts to answer the question: why do good people do bad things?

My Take

In an Author's Note at the end the author tells us that his plot style is to "take one crime trope,  add a strange and interesting thing that intrigues me, blend and pour over ice..... Wild Place is a Rear Window-style mystery. The special ingredient: "Satanic Panic - a wave of hysteria and moral outrage that swept the world in the 1980s and 90s." "

A few weeks before Christmas 1989 teenager Tracie Reed goes missing. As the end of the year approaches she is still missing and the suburb of Camp Hill puts its community under a microscope. Neighbourhood Watch in particular has created a vigilante mindset, and one teenager in particular is viewed with great suspicion. And there are many who have things to hide.

Camp Hill is an Australian suburb on the Mornington Peninsular in Victoria. I had to remind myself a number of times of the Australian setting because I felt at times there was a North American vibe to it.

As the blurb says, the central theme is why good people do bad things. I was amazed at how this plot finalised, because I didn't have the "bad person" pegged at all, nor their motivation. 

Fascinating. In the long run, several good people do bad things. But which do you think is the worst? This would make a good book for a group discussion if you are looking for one.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

4.4, THE NOWHERE CHILD
4.5, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 

Review: THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW, Christian White

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 1798 KB
• Print Length: 370 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1250194377
• Publisher: Affirm Press (September 24, 2019)
• Publication Date: September 24, 2019
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B07XZ1P2JR

Synopsis (Amazon)

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is a mystery/thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she’s forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

Brilliant and beguiling, The Wife and the Widow takes you to a cliff edge and asks the question: how well do we really know the people we love?

My Take

This novel is based on such a clever plot twist.

John Keddie has been away for two weeks supposedly at a palliative care conference in London. When he doesn't arrive on a flight home to Melbourne, doesn't answer his phone, his wife Kate reports him missing.

Then a security company reports an intruder at their holiday house on Belport Island in Bass Strait, and Kate and her father-in-law travel to the island to see whether John is there.

On the face of it this is a standard missing person/murder mystery but nothing prepares the reader for the huge plot twist that begins to puzzle about half way through the novel.

An excellent, recommended read.

My rating: 4.5

I had previously read THE NOWHERE CHILD

Review: THE NOWHERE CHILD, Christian White

• this edition an ARC from NetGalley
• Available from Amazon for Kindle
• File Size: 1646 KB
• Print Length: 384 pages
• Publisher: Affirm Press (June 26, 2018)
• Publication Date: June 26, 2018
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B07DCPW9GL

Synopsis (Amazon for Kindle)

‘Her name is Sammy Went. This photo was taken on her second birthday. Three days later she was gone.’

On a break between teaching photography classes in Melbourne, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home twenty-eight years earlier. He believes Kim is that girl.

At first she brushes it off, but when Kim scratches the surface of her family history in Australia, questions arise that aren’t easily answered. To find the truth, she must travel to Sammy’s home of Manson, Kentucky, and into a dark past. As the mystery of Sammy’s disappearance unravels and the town’s secrets are revealed, this superb novel builds towards an electrifying climax.

Inspired by Gillian Flynn’s frenetic suspense and Stephen King’s masterful world-building, The Nowhere Child is a combustible tale of trauma, cult, conspiracy and memory. It is the remarkable debut of Christian White, an exhilarating new Australian talent.

My Take

I've had this book sitting on my Kindle for some months now, courtesy NetGalley, and now it has been chosen by our book group for our monthly read.

Kim Leamy is approached by someone who has been searching for his lost sister for years. He has scanned thousands of online images looking for similarities to an artist's impression of what his sister would look like nearly three decades after her disappearance. But he is American and Kim has a hard job thinking that the woman who brought her up would have been a kidnapper.

However he tells her that a DNA test he has had taken by a Melbourne lab says there is a 98.5% probability that she is is sister. When she approaches her father it is obvious to Kim that there is some truth in what the American is telling her, that her father knows, and she decides to go to America to find out the truth for herself.

A well constructed interesting story, with good mystery elements.

My rating: 4.4

About the author
Christian White is an internationally bestselling and award-winning Australian author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child, won the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award. He is currently in development with Matchbox Pictures on a new television series which he co-created, inspired by his script One Year Later, winner of the 2013 Australian Writers Guild ‘Think Inside The Box’ competition. His films have been shown at film festivals around the world. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and their greyhound.