Tuesday 19 September 2017

Review ~ Midnight at the Bright Ideas Book Store by Matthew Sullivan


32599319
William Heinemann
2017


What's it all about...

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 youngest BookFrog Joey Molina kills himself in the bookstore’s upper level, 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 pages 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?


My thoughts about it...


I was really excited to receive my review copy of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, not just because of the tactile nature of its beautiful midnight blue hardback cover but also because any novel which features a book store is a sure fire winner with me.

When Lydia Smith discovers Joey Molina, one of her regular book customers, dead on the upper floor of her bookstore, this sad event opens up, for Lydia, a whole heap of secrets which she never knew existed. That Joey's life may be interwoven with Lydia's comes as something as a shock to her and the journey she must take in order to discover more about herself, and Joey, is both enlightening and frightening in equal measure.

I found that I was soon engrossed in the story, the writing is good and the plot development is maintained with a fine eye for detail and the complicated nature of the relationships within the novel added necessary light and shade. There are some deeply flawed characters, particularly Lydia's widowed father, Tomas, who had more than enough secrets of his own and the relationship between father and daughter is upsetting and at times, reveals far more questions than it does answers. I enjoyed the way the story combined both past and present . The mystery at the heart of the story is interwoven with some quite dark moments, particularly with those uncomfortable secrets which, if left unchallenged, can fester and destroy everything around them. 

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a well written debut novel by a talented new author.


About the Author

Matthew Sullivan grew up in a family of eight spirited children in suburban Denver, Colorado. In addition to working for years at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he has taught writing and literature at colleges in Boston, Idaho and Poland, and currently teaches writing, literature and film at Big Bend Community College in the high desert of Washington State. He is married to a librarian and has two children and a scruffy dog named Ernie.

More about the author can be found on his website by clicking here 



My thanks to the publishers for my review copy of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore


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