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A review by agrippinaes
The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
3.0
Four strangers meet in a public library one day, and are drawn together when they hear a woman scream inside the building. The unsettling noise sticks in their heads, especially when they learn the dead body of a woman has been found in the library a few days later. They can’t help but try to learn more about the case, but it isn’t long before they start to wonder if they can even trust each other.
I have really mixed feelings about this book. To start with the positives, the writing in this is very strong. It’s engaging and personable, and I actually think there’s some really clever plotting. The book is told in a format I hadn’t expected, based off the description: you, the reader, is reading excerpts from a woman’s novel, and each chapter is rounded off with letters from her beta reader. Initially, this made for a rather disjointed reading experience: it was a bit confusing and took me a while to get used to. By the end of the book, I actually enjoyed this structure and thought it led to some really dramatic storytelling. There’s also a plot-twist halfway through which genuinely took me by surprise.
The actual mystery involving the woman in the library had some interesting points, but I did find it a bit convoluted and I think there were possibly one too many twists and turns in it for it to work for me. But this wasn’t really my issue with the book. There was a really superficial tone to this that I couldn’t get into. I’m fairly certain this was because of the book-within-a-book concept, but the four main characters felt superficial. I didn’t warm to any of the characters through the book at all.
I think, ultimately, that this was the point, but that was my issue with it. I was reading it feeling like I was reading something that was trying to be clever, that these weren’t meant to be characters I found empathetic. It was a bit of an odd experience. To try and put it into words, I felt a sense of smugness whilst reading it and, whilst I think this was deliberate, it wasn’t my kind of thing. I went into this expecting something quite different - and what I got isn’t a bad book by any means, but it’s certainly not for me. That said, the writing is very good and it is very cleverly plotted, and I think this will probably work really well for readers who enjoy a very twisty mystery. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy of this book.
Content Notes:
Warnings:
I have really mixed feelings about this book. To start with the positives, the writing in this is very strong. It’s engaging and personable, and I actually think there’s some really clever plotting. The book is told in a format I hadn’t expected, based off the description: you, the reader, is reading excerpts from a woman’s novel, and each chapter is rounded off with letters from her beta reader. Initially, this made for a rather disjointed reading experience: it was a bit confusing and took me a while to get used to. By the end of the book, I actually enjoyed this structure and thought it led to some really dramatic storytelling. There’s also a plot-twist halfway through which genuinely took me by surprise.
Spoiler
Leo’s letters really annoyed me at first, but as the book went on, they became the part I was more interested in. They were genuinely creepy and unsettling, and I thought this was a very effective way of telling this kind of story.The actual mystery involving the woman in the library had some interesting points, but I did find it a bit convoluted and I think there were possibly one too many twists and turns in it for it to work for me. But this wasn’t really my issue with the book. There was a really superficial tone to this that I couldn’t get into. I’m fairly certain this was because of the book-within-a-book concept, but the four main characters felt superficial. I didn’t warm to any of the characters through the book at all.
I think, ultimately, that this was the point, but that was my issue with it. I was reading it feeling like I was reading something that was trying to be clever, that these weren’t meant to be characters I found empathetic. It was a bit of an odd experience. To try and put it into words, I felt a sense of smugness whilst reading it and, whilst I think this was deliberate, it wasn’t my kind of thing. I went into this expecting something quite different - and what I got isn’t a bad book by any means, but it’s certainly not for me. That said, the writing is very good and it is very cleverly plotted, and I think this will probably work really well for readers who enjoy a very twisty mystery. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy of this book.
Content Notes:
Warnings: