I picked this book for our yearly Icelandic Christmas family tradition. It took me a little while to read it because life was crazy busy leading up to back to school and then first few weeks of school are jam packed chaos. I just finished this past weekend and I couldn’t wait to write a review for this book.
This book has been referred to as a locked room thriller. This is about a bookseller who has to escape from a library that holds her darkest secrets. Not only is she trapped in a library thought to be haunted by the ghosts of those who have owned a book of fairy tales and died unexpectedly, but there is a killer running around the library trying to keep other secrets locked in.
When I was looking at books for our tradition I bounced between this book and 2 others. In the end I was hooked because my wife and I used to be book sellers, my wife works in a library now, and I love a good Ghost story and this had everything. At first I didn’t expect to write a review for this one. There were a couple of things that were bugging me as I read this book.
These items are completely my own preferences and issues. The book is written from many points of view. Every chapter is from a certain characters perspective and sometimes you will get multiple chapters in a row. I had a problem with when the POV keeps changing during the same event, it was really difficult to understand who was speaking at that moment. I had to keep flipping back to the beginning of the chapter to find out which person’s POV I was reading. the book also gives bits of information in the most random way with some being flashbacks from the character, bits of dialogue between characters and there are just more and more questions that build through out the book with little answers until the end.
By the end of the book none of this mattered. The last 120 pages were intense and I could not put this book down. I got so caught up in what was happening and getting each tiny detail I couldn’t stop. I was very lucky that we decided we were not going to plan anything over the Labor Day weekend so I could get completely lost in the library.
I would describe this book as if the movies Clue and Night at the Museum mashed together but it was a library. Every character has a part to play in the over all story. Sure this is usually true about most books but sometimes you have background characters that are there to enhance the background and not give main character energy. Every one of the characters in the library are a main character and you find that develops the deeper you get into the book.
I never struggled to get into this book. It was an enjoyable read from the start even if I occasionally got irritated with the style of it at first. The last 4th of the book was where I became obsessed with this story. I’m sure you have guessed my rating already but this is absolutely a 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃 read and one of my favorites for the year. I liked this so much I got my wife interested in it and she is going to use it as her book club pick for November. I highly recommend this book and I can’t wait to read Ande’s first book, You Are Fatally Invited. If it is as good as this book I’m sure she will become one of my favorites authors.
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