Author: Matthew Sullivan
Series: None
Publication Date: June 13, 2017
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 338
Obtained: purchased
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery
Rating: 3/5
Bottom Line: Ultimately, didn't work for me
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Library
Summary: Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs — the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store's overwhelmed shelves. But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore's upper room, Lydia's life comes unglued. Always Joey's favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia? As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey's suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia's life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. ~amazon.com
Review: This is not my usual read and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about the novel. It’s a novel about secrets and their destructive nature set in a book store, how could it go wrong?
I’m still trying to put my finger on it. While the mystery was intriguing and unfolded nicely, the novel just didn’t grab me. There are shifting story tellers, a technique I generally find off putting, but it was well done; one person’s perspective dovetailed into another so it was not confusing or jarring.
I guess my biggest complaint is that I never connected with any of the characters. While I found myself empathetic many times, none of the characters drew me in. In fact, some characters seemed more like a plot devices than true characters in that they were abandoned once they had served their plot advancement. While most brought about their own destruction or pushed their destruction on others.
Did I appreciate the twisty intrigue? Yes, it’s what kept me reading. Did I feel satisfaction upon completion? Not really. It won’t be a read I recommend.
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