Wow! What an exciting read! The amount of tension and suspense in The Night Shift is superb! Nina works the night shift at the front desk of a 24 hour local storage warehouse. Most of the time, Nina is alone except for the odd renters who visit their units at all hours. Why do they come to their storage spaces at these times and what do they keep there? Nina is suspicious of some of them. She also hears weird noises. But is she afraid and paranoid because she is by herself at night in the warehouse or is somebody messing with her? What starts as a normal low key evening turns into a scary, heart-pounding ordeal. There are so many twists with potential danger around every corner. I could not put this down. 4.5 stars! Kudos to Gemma Rogers for a fantastic locked door thriller. And thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for the digital ARC.

This book is a great example of suspense done right!

Nina is working the night shift in a 24 hour storage facility. Boring and quiet, right? But not this night! The book takes place over just 12 hours of the most harrowing ordeal you never hope to experience. I think it added to the realism that the character was based on the author's own daughter's type 1 diabetes, so I felt that the scenes were authentic and not just created for dramatic effect.

While making her nightly rounds, Nina notices something she wasn't meant to see - and someone saw knows it! What follows is a game of cat and mouse that is so tense, I couldn't stop at the end of each chapter. I suspended disbelief because, even with Nina's ingenuity, props just appeared at convenient times, but this is fiction, right? I like my books fast-paced, with mystery/terror/suspense that build tension as they go, and Rogers definitely delivered that with The Night Shift!

Thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books (Bold Book Club) for an advance reader's copy!

The Night Shift
by Gemma Rogers
Pub Date: Mar 06 2025

The Night Shift takes place over the span of the 12-hour shift of Nina, who is currently attending medical school, and uses her night shift at the 24-hour storage facility to catch up on homework. She spends her shift making rounds, looking at the security cameras, and studying. Her shifts are usually very quiet, but tonight's shift isn't. Nina finds herself locked in the building with no way out, no way to contact her supervisor, there is a male in the building who is threatening and dangerous. Nina is fighting for her life while playing a game of cat and mouse.

The story was full of suspense, kept me turning the pages until the very last page! Author, Gemma Rogers crafts a suspenseful thriller which I highly recommend.

Many thanks to #TheNightShift #NetGalley and #BoldwoodBooks for providing me with this 5 star E-ARC!

There was SO much I loved about The Night Shift. I really appreciated having a diabetic main character, as a diabetic myself. The fact that Gemma Rogers took her daughter’s diagnosis and life altering ailment, researched and became knowledgeable enough to write a believable and relatable character blew me away. Thank you!

This book was a rollercoaster that I didn’t want off of. It reminded me of the movie Panic Room. Being trapped in a building with your captor and trying to save yourself from your own highs and lows of blood sugar. It was intense and captivating from cover to cover.

Highly recommend and I’m looking forward to more novels from Gemma!

The Night Shift by Gemma Rogers was and excellent fast paced book, that had me sitting on the edge of my seat. I could not get enough of it.

How can one 12-hour night shift be so deadly?

Nina has just started her new job working at the local 24 hour storage facility, this is to fund her studies at the medical school as she wants to be a doctor. On her night shift, she usually does her rounds of the unit, looks at the security camera's, and helps people if they need assistance with their lock up. When she has done this she opens her medical books and studies throughout the night. So, this shift is going to be no different!

Nina spot's something on her shift and this everything changes. . . . . . . . . her shift takes a different and dangerous turn.

There's a dangerous man at the storage facility who becomes a serious threat to Nina, especially as he takes her phone, she needs her phone as it her diabetic app on it to monitor her diabetes. She knows her glucose is becoming low but he has started to hunt her. . . . . .

Why has he started to hunt her?

She is only doing her job! But she is all alone in this storage unit and it is not small storage unit!

Will she survive her night shift?

WoW This book becomes fast paced and full of great twists and turns which will have you turning the pages over quickly to find out what happens next. I loved it and The Night Shift was one of the best books I have read this year.

Great Holiday read.

Wow, that was intense! The story started a bit slow, but once it started you better hang on. I've always enjoyed being a night shift worker, but this book has me second guessing that. Very well written, and really fast paced action made you feel like you were right in the story. My heart was definitely racing for a while wondering what could possibly happen next. Very much enjoyed this story and would recommend for anyone looking for a thriller.

The book is about a college student who works in a storage unit on the night shift. She has shady characters who come to drop things off but then encounters that they are dangerous. It takes the reader through the entire night hour by hour and how she comes to be a victim as well as her friend who went to check on her.. it’s drawn out but the ending was good.

This book would have been a book that I would have picked for when I am on a plane ride. It reads very quickly and has some twists and turns. It takes place primarily in one location, which I liked. It allows the reader to focus on other areas of the writing. The main character felt very human to me because she got hurt and was scarred at what was happening. There were moments when I was yelling that she needed to do this or that. However, I could feel the energy as if she was reacting how an actual person in her situation would act. I did not see the twist about the bad guy being related to her boss and then loop in that he was the same person going on the trip with her ex-boyfriends. Who wanted her to go on the same trip with him. Things do just happen in a big circle.

The ending made me want to know more about how things happened after this incident. I know that there is a little epilogue that ties it up nicely. However, I am a person who always wants more.

How can one 12-hour night shift be so deadly? Oh, let me count the ways…

From the moment I picked up The Night Shift, I was hooked. The premise alone—an overnight shift at a storage facility, an eerie setting, and a stranger dragging in a suitcase—sent my thriller-loving heart into overdrive. Gemma Rogers doesn’t just set the scene; she plunges you into it, immersing you in the dimly lit corridors, the sterile scent of metal storage units, and the oppressive silence that hums with something sinister just beneath the surface.

Nina thought she had found the perfect job—one that paid well, offered solitude, and allowed her to study in peace while the rest of the world lay curled up in their cozy beds. But when a man steps through the door with that ominous suitcase, her uneventful night turns into a nightmare. And let me tell you, once the tension kicks in, it does not let up.

What I loved about this book was the pacing—fast, relentless, and utterly nerve-wracking. Rogers has a way of making the mundane feel menacing. The hum of the security monitors, the flickering fluorescent lights, the creak of a door that shouldn’t be open—everything is heightened, pulling you deeper into Nina’s fear. I could feel her unease, her desperate attempts to rationalize the situation, and ultimately, her terror as things spiraled out of control.

And the twists? Oh, they’re good. Just when I thought I had things figured out, Rogers threw in a curveball that had me flipping back through pages, questioning everything.

If you love atmospheric thrillers that make your pulse race and your mind spin, The Night Shift is a must-read. It’s the kind of book that will have you side-eyeing every late-night shift worker you meet, wondering what secrets lurk behind their tired eyes.

Final verdict: Read it with the lights on—and maybe rethink that quiet, flexible night job.

#TheNightShift #NetGalley #BoldwoodBooks

Zero stars for this one.
This is the dumbest, most annoying book I've read in a long time. Like outlandishly improbable plotting, zero-to-none research, characters that are too stupid to find their own butts in the dark as well as too boring/one-dimensional to hold your interest, the inescapable Young Ditzy Female No Working Braincell But Lotsa Feels first-person singular narration typical for this kind of substandard dreck, tons of repetition (if I have to see the word "diabetic" *one more time*...), liberal helpings of Idiot Plot, lacklustre editing (not that I can blame the poor sod that had to edit this garbage), and prose that reads like something a fifteen-year-old dreamed up? Step right up! You can literally feel your neurons withering while plodding through this boring, convoluted, "twist"-infested mess.

You can tell the quality of the plotting by the fact that the author has to dedicate a big chunk of the final chapter to a tacked-on explanation of the actions and motivations of the bad guy/s -- "and when they did this, they found out that, and they had to come up with X, and all the while Y, and this is because that, and then that happened on top of it", and yes, it's just as asinine as it sounds. A well-executed novel, even/especially a genre one, should be like a big, intricate, elegant machine where everything works together seamlessly to create something bigger than its parts. This is like some cheap capsule toy that wobbles around for a bit before the gears come loose and the wheels fall off while playing crazy annoying music.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC, but this is just too awful to take seriously. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Will definitely stay away from this author in the future.

Thank you NetGalley and Boldwood Books for allowing me to read this e-arc.This was a fast paced thriller with several brief POVs.It has some slow sections but definitely had some thrilling aspects.

My thanks to Boldwood Books and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘The Night Shift’ written by Gemma Rogers in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Nina wants to be a doctor to help others with diabetes and working the night shift at the Storage Queen pays well and helps fund her university degree. She’s just taken over from her manager Stacey when a man arrives dragging a heavy suitcase. Nina’s instincts tell her that something’s wrong but she couldn’t have guessed what was going to happen.

‘The Night Shift’ is a cat-and-mouse thriller set over a twelve-hour period with Nina convinced that she won’t get out of Storage Queen’s warehouse in one piece. Although it has exciting spells when I‘ve not been able to read fast enough I’ve got frustrated by some of Nina’s actions, and didn’t think it was as good as the previous books I’ve read by Gemma Rogers. The details I learnt about diabetes were informative and the characters were well- described but although I was cheering Nina on as she fought back, the whole story was so far-fetched especially the length of time taken for emergency help to arrive. Nevertheless, it’s a decent read with suspense and twists, and I recommend it for the short chapters that kept me involved.

The Night Shift is set over a 12 hour period, when Nina works at a 24 hour storage unit in a mindnumpingly boring job, which usually allows her to study and helps pay for her medical degree, until a man drags in a suitcase and his strange behaviour alerts Nina's suspicion.

A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, lasting the entire 12 hours!

I really enjoy Gemma's writing, although I felt the plot was too one dimensional in this book and the twists felt forced. Nina was really frustrating as she bypassed so many opportunities to defend herself or escape, which felt like it was solely so the story could continue.

The feeling of being trapped and alone was well written and I could feel Nina's anxiety at times, which helped me connect better with the story through the repetitive scenes of Nina's missed opportunities!

3 ⭐️ Thanks to Netgalley, Gemma Rogers and Boldwood for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Not so much as a roller coaster of a story , but an up and down stairs one - you will understand when you read it !! Probably everything that might go wrong does so on this nightshift for Nina with plenty of twists and turns throughout to keep the reader guessing who is lying to whom and why !! Lots of action too and the author also highlights what can go wrong with being a diabetic (esp type 1) when you don't do what you need to do.

Thanks to Netgalley/Boldwood for the ARC to review

Just twelve hours to survive...

Hot on the heels of "The Honeymoon" (which is phenomenal, by the way), I dived into this latest offering by Gemma Rogers whose thrillers have always kept me turning the pages in anticipation. And while this one started off as a slow build with not much happening in the first hour or so of Nina's night shift, it certainly picked up pace into the almost ridiculous with a relatively unrealistic game of cat and mouse. I'm not sure how Nina managed to survive under the circumstances when she really should have been dead within the first few minutes. Especially considering some of her poor choices, not to mention the diabetes.

Nina is a uni student in her second year of medical school, her dream to become a doctor and treat others with the often times debilitating diabetes. So when boyfriend Dom tries pleading with her to drop everything and spend six months bumming around travelling, first stop Thailand, she doesn't even consider it. Becoming a doctor is her dream and no way was she jeaopardising it when she was so close to fulfilling her dream. So the couple had a major bust up just moments before Nina was due to start her shift at Storage Queen (funnily enough, we have a Storage King here), thus making her late for her shift.

As manager Stacey bids her a hasty farewell, Nina is looking forward to a quiet stress-free night shift. Until it isn't. When the facility is plunged into darkness, Nina suddenly finds herself in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an assailant she cannot see. But she knows this place. She just needs to navigate it stealthily and silently without her pursuer knowing so that she can make her escape and alert authorities as to her discovery. You'd think so, right? Wrong.

Nina makes every stupid decision known to man. Instead of making her escape, she leads him on a merry chase up and down, round and round, whilst never getting very far in the process. I threw my hands up in the air in frustration several times, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. The whole concept was a neverending cycle that even exhausted me by the end.

But there were some aspects of the story that I found totally unbelievable. The security guard, for example. No way could he just disappear without anyone noticing or following it up. He'd have to log every call and every action and response to every call out so that someone would always be aware of where he was should anything go wrong. In reality, his disappearing off the radar with his company should have had them sending someone out to his last call out to investigate. My husband was in security in another life, so I questioned this with him, to which he confirmed my suspicions. And he also worked night shifts though they were never this exciting. But that was just one thing. There are many others which, if I mentioned, would spoil the story and I don't want to do that.

However, I found this one to be rather unrealistic and bordering on ridiculous to the point that Nina irritated me. I couldn't care less what happened to her, she made that many stupid decisions. She made it very difficult to empathise with her and her plight and I'm still dizzy from all the up and down, to-ing and fro-ing she took us on.

The pacing was steady throughout (though I was kept dizzy with all the running about) and while she mostly made stupid decisions, there were a few heroic ones I could cheer her for. Her insulin pen, for one. Ingenious. And despite battling hypoglycaemic attacks, she managed to maintain some level of focus which was to be commended.

Overall, an OK thriller. For 258 pages, it felt a little longer to me but that could be because Nina irritated the crap out of me and I kept wanting to slap her. There were a couple of good twists that I didn't see coming...probably because I was too focused on Nina's stupidity. But they kept the story tight and made it a little worthwhile. And while I don't mind tales that border the unrealistic or OTT, I do like them to entertain me not irritate me. And Nina irriated me more often than not.

I would like to thank #GemmaRogers, #Netgalley, #BoldwoodBooks and #RachelsRandomResources for an ARC of #TheNightShift in exchange for an honest review.

This review appears on my blog at https://stinathebookaholic.blogspot.com/.

Nina works the night shift in this tension filled thriller. What starts as a normal start to Nina's shift ends up being a fight for her life. Full of action with good characters this cat and mouse thriller will hook you from the start set in one night this book I read in one sitting. Thanks to Boldwood books and Netgalley for this review ARC.

This was a great locked door thriller which reeled me in right from the beginning! The confined and isolated feeling I experienced right until the end, had me hooked.

Nina is a medical student who has the perfect job. A quiet overnight shift in a storage unit facility where she can study in peace. Working behind a window, she can watch when people come in and out of the unit with little interaction. On this particular shift, however, Nina becomes suspicious when a man comes in dragging a large suitcase. Things seem a little off and her instincts are right. Her shift turns into a deadly case of cat and mouse.

This is a fast paced read which will elevate your heart rate. My eyes couldn't keep up with the speed of the book and I easily devoured it in one sitting. Highly recommend!

What an absolute thrill ride. Lots of twists and turns throughout and I was enjoying this thrill ride the whole time. A definite recommend

Thanks publisher and netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own and isn't influenced by anyone else

#GemmaRogers #BoldwoodBooks #TheNightShift

The Night Shift by Gemma Rogers

12 hours of terror!

Nina Is a med student who works the night shift at Storage Queen. She likes the relative silence interrupted with the odd customer popping in to look at their storage units, put things in or take things out. She uses that time to study.

Working alone, she still gets nervous when she has to do her routine checks within the warehouse.

Unfortunately tonight is not going to be a quiet night.
A creepy customer comes in and chaos ensues.

This is where I have to stop giving out details.

This book hooked me from page one. It was a one sitting read.

From feeling sorry for Nina 's heartbreak after she broke up with Dom, to the chaotic scary night.
I was right alongside Nina as she tried to survive that 12 hour night shift.
I was scared for her and with her.
My heart raced and blood pressure rose as I flipped through the story.
I liked how the story showed her struggle with diabetes as the night wore on.

As always the author wrote a taut thriller that the reader will want to gulp down in one sitting.

4**** stars
highly recommended

I will be eagerly anticipating the author's next book.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to review this book.

Short, sharp chapters, intense setting and a character trying to stay alive.

The very best thing about this book was the depiction of T1 diabetes. T2 is in the public consciousness but very little is ever said about T1 so this was a joy to see cat and mouse with a hypo.

Good fun.