 |
| 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
~***~
Now that sounds like a good one! Thanks for the review, Josie x
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Susan x
Delete