Where We Go at Night
Ikwo Ntekim
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN: 978-1335453853
Harper Collins US, October 27, 2026, 400 pgs

What Trisha wants most for a high school graduation present is for her grandfather to reintroduce her to the local faerie she stumbled upon in the woods when she was seven and explain her family’s weird ancestral connection to them. She wants other things, too—for her father not to have died in a farming accident, for her mother to return from California and apologize for fleeing the family in grief, for a cute girl to saunter into her life and sweep her into an easy summer romance, and for her best friend Charlie to stay in their small South Carolina town and save her from being the only Black kid in town again. Some of her wishes come true, but in true fae fashion, there’s a nasty little twist to how it all goes down.

The fae in this book claim to be removed from the region’s history because they’re mostly concerned with their own realms and conflicts. But just as the faerie have a subtle warping influence on the realms they cross over into, American history has had an impact on their culture as well. The author writes both the “real world” of South Carolina and the fantastically eerie world of faerie in a way that makes them carry equal weight in the story and in the minds of every character we meet. Trisha, as the daughter of a Black man from out of town and a local white woman whose family has a long history of dealing with the fae, sits at the nexus between these two equally unjust worlds and highlights their similarities just by existing. The racial aspects are explored and explained, but never really reckoned with. Both of these worlds—faerie and mundane—are places where bad things exist, and imperfect people alongside them. There are no easy answers or resolution here.

The humans in this book feel like familiar neighbors, but the fae here are nasty. While there’s a certain amount of faerie dust and gossamer wings, there’s far more blood, guts, and grime. The constant violence and pettiness attached to all the court intrigue make the courtiers seem much more clumsy than clever. In the places where cruel machinations and unexpected manipulation might be, there’s a lot of brute force and high school level maturity on display. It works because the characters and their story are all so deliberately imperfect and gray.

Trisha does get her summer fling as well, but even that is so deeply gray, and the people involved so flawed, that it’s almost a bit hard to swallow. The sheer gutsy in-universe foolishness of every character’s choices makes it work. These are not smart, brave, or particularly moral people—but that’s how people from an insular town with an eerie, racialized history would probably act when confronted with the hostile supernatural and the uncomfortable past. If you like your heroes very black and white (no pun intended) and your stories morally unambiguous with a strong sense of justice, this book is perhaps not for you. But if you like mess and drama with your magic, you might enjoy this. Even the bittersweet ending feels like an homage to classic cautionary stories of dealing with the fae.

Where We Go at Night is a vivid, grim, emotionally immersive faerie story that also takes an honest look at racial history and family secrets. If you liked the 1985 film Return to Oz or Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer series, you’ll probably enjoy this.