No. 2 – An award-winning book
The woman in the library / Sulari Gentill
Won: Best Indie Novel – Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2022
Just in case you have this book on your TBR pile and want your reading experience unspoiled, I’ll start with my conclusion: concept + murder mystery = solid effort. If you want to know how I got to this conclusion, keep reading but beware of spoilers ahead.
The best way to describe this book, is by comparing it to Matryoshka dolls: one story is nestled into another which is nestled into another. I will try to explain as clearly as possible. The story is about Hannah (doll one), an Australian author who is writing a story about Freddie (doll two), an Australian author living in America, who is writing a story based on the people she meets in the Boston public library (doll three). Although this technically makes Hannah the main character (without her the others wouldn’t exist), she’s the one we know the least about. What is known about her, is provided to the reader through letters from Leo, a fan who lives in Boston and sends her feedback and suggestions. To make things as complicated as can be, Hannah writes a Leo into Freddie’s life: a neighbour, who has the same air of vagueness and intrusiveness about him.
Thankfully, there is no Leo in the third storyline.
Doll two takes up the most of the book, and it makes Freddie the most developed character. Her story starts in the library, where she seeks inspiration for her book and finds it in Handsome Man, Heroic Chin, and Freud Girl, or: the people sitting at the same table as her, Cain, Whit, and Marigold. Then suddenly there is a scream that terrifies everyone in the library, and the police is called in to find out what happened. The foursome immediately bonds over this incident and are convinced someone was murdered, even though the police didn’t find a body. The way they instantly become close friends over this seemed a bit odd, although part of how that is possible is explained later on as the mystery unravels. There also was a lot of young adult relationship drama that did nothing for me. But when a body is found after all, the little group suddenly is involved in attacks, stalkers and more deaths, and the focus shifts more to the mystery.
To me this book wasn’t the page-turner it wants to be though, as I felt it was lacking angst and urgency in the biggest story (Freddie’s story). The most angsty parts, are Leo’s letters to Hannah which become increasingly uncomfortable, but even that storyline peaks at the wrong time so it never gets truly scary. The third story is the smallest and least developed as it mostly follows Freddie’s own exploits and it’s basically a repeat of what she goes through. It’s also abandoned half-way through as she is too busy solving the mystery to continue writing. I liked the concept of this book a lot, and I really wanted to like it a lot, but the story (stories) felt “so-so”. That’s not to say this is a bad book, it just left me a bit disappointed. I would like to point out the cover, which I think is really cool and represents the story within a story so well.
Bookworm in the City 