*actual rating 3.5*

Told in multiple POVs, we get to know Berlin, Cam and Jessie as their worlds and lives overlap. Berlin is an attentive, over-achiever, mapping out her future minus someone she thought would be there by her side when her best friend suddenly starts ghosting her. But she has Pink Mountain Pizza, her part-time job, to keep her distracted. As for Cam, he hasn’t been the same since his cousin Kiki disappeared. To him, this is horrific, but to the town, she’s just another missing Native girl, making him spiral into dropping out of school. Jessie isn’t your typical pretty and rich girl. After a traumatic childhood, she’s turned her attention to living in spite of it entirely.

When Jessie starts a new job at Pink Mountain Pizza, the three teens lives collide one weekend. With grief and change some of the highlighted, more painful themes they battle with—and together—we lean into the mystery of Kiki’s disappearance, of social injustice, accountability and how they feel they have to dodge stereotypes. As the teens find each other going through similar feelings and thoughts, one week in their small, snowy town takes turns none of them expected—and the reader is right there with them.

Overall, Those Pink Mountain Nights was poignant, eye-opening and moving. I felt myself loving Berlin’s POV the most, but by the end, I had warmed to all the characters and how, despite their differences, they found common ground in each other. Jen’s way of highlighting the real life issue of missing Native and Indigenous people with Kiki’s storyline, and Cam’s mothers murder, was heart wrenchingly raw. She shows how many allies around the world that say they support and want to protect minority voices despite there still being a lot of racist/bias undertones in their actions. I did struggle to get into the book for a good chunk of the beginning, and felt it dragged out a lot toward the end, but as a whole I believe there was such an important, heartfelt story with so much good there. Jen’s writing is truly magnificent and I wholeheartedly look forward to seeing what she writes next.

god I love jen ferguson