It's closing time and Lydia is locking up at Bright Ideas, the local bookstore she works at. But something tonight just doesn't feel right. Are all of her regular bookfrogs gone or are some still in the building? What Lydia finds is that all but one of her bookfrogs are gone... but one is not leaving her. Joey, the quiet kid that claims books saved his life, has hanged himself on the upper level of the store. Under complete shock, panic, pain, guilt, Lydia finds a childhood picture of herself in his pocket... But why would he have that? He only shopped at her store, they weren't exactly friends.
Turns out, Joey thought very highly of her and actually left all of his belongings to her. All of his belongings and many, many secrets for her to uncover.
But uncovering Joey's secrets means she has to uncover many of her own. Can she relive her experiences of the HammerMan? Can she handle rekindling her friendship with Raj? Is she prepared for the overwhelming amount of pressure bestowed upon her all because of Joey, a boy she barely knew?
Turns out, Joey has secrets he didn't want to keep.
Raj had secrets he didn't even know existed.
Lydia knew who the HammerMan was all along.
But did her father have more information than he knew?

I love, love, love this book and am so appreciative of NetGalley for providing me an advanced copy of it!
Mark your calendars, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore hits shelves June 13th!

Page One - I was engaged, Page Two, I was hooked. This is a well written mystery and sometimes thriller. Although a few of the chapters were choppy the story was convincingly told.

Lydia, running from her past, is working at the Bright Idea Bookstore and caring for her those lost and homeless lovers of books who are known as the Bookfrogs. . The story unfolds when Lydia finds a photograph of herself in one of the Bookfrog's pocket. Her past comes rushing back when she examines this photograph. She is ten years old and blowing out the candles on a chocolate cake surrounded by her best friends, Raj and Carol. And the story takes off and never stops until the last page.

I wish the last chapter had contained just a bit more, crystallizing the ending more clearly for me. Never mind, it was a really good read. Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this title. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish this book which means I will not be able to review it. I truly appreciate the opportunity and apologize for the inconvenience the lack of review may cause you.

This was an enjoyable read. It kept me engaged and the story fell nicely together in a totally believable way.

This is one of the best psychological thrillers I have read in a long time. I was intrigued with the storyline from the beginning and completely blindsided by the end!

Matthew Sullivan’s debut novel begins in a place that probably all of us are familiar with: a bookstore. That haven from the outside world that offers us a way to bring some of that essence home with us to keep for our very own, and in the case of the Bright Ideas Bookstore in Denver, it offers a special sort of haven for Lydia’s BookFrogs, those patrons who come and settle in, read, on a daily basis. They’ve become part of the store’s ambiance.

And on this day, at the end of this day, Lydia’s trying to close up Bright Ideas for the night. Only, she realizes that she hasn’t seen Joey leave. Joey, the youngest of the BookFrogs, ”haunted but harmless—a dust bunny blowing through the corners of the store. She heads up the stairs, knowing she’ll find him lost in a book or lost in thoughts, but when she sees him, she can’t believe what she’s seeing.

Joey. Hanging.

Everything Lydia knows about Joey doesn’t amount to very much. He had no real family or friends, no stories he’s shared about his life except that one. It comes as a surprise when his landlady contacts her to let her know that Joey had left her what belongings he did have.

There’s a combination of factors that add layers to this mystery upon mystery upon mystery. A boy with no real past, seems to be speaking in code to Lydia through messages she pieces together from his books from the apartment. But what is it he’s trying to tell her? And why her?

What did he know about Lydia, what did he know about her past? All this looking into Joey’s past can’t help but stir Lydia’s past up, a past she would have preferred never to think about again.

A puzzle that weaves in and out of the past and present, flawlessly, with an unexpected twist or two, and memories come creeping back up and what a tangled web it all makes.



Pub Date: 13 Jun 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Scribner

Lydia is a clerk at a used bookstore, creating order in her life by caring for her Bookfrogs - the eccentric, sometimes troubled regular customers of the store. Her carefully crafted life is threatened, though, when one of her favorite Bookfrogs hangs himself in the store. Soon Lydia is forced to confront a past she's kept carefully hidden. This was a really compelling novel, although I found the ending a bit too pat.

4 stars--I really liked it.

What a wonderful, thoughtful, and devastating book. I couldn't stop reading. From the description, title, and cover, I assumed this would be a twee mystery, but it wasn't--it was a dark tale of violence and regret.

The book's main strength was in characterization. Lydia, Joey, Raj--I saw everyone so clearly, and ached for them. (Poor, sweet Joey.) Lydia especially broke my heart, but it was also inspirational to see her go from traumatized child to gracious adult. The minor characters (especially Plath) were also very well done. I felt like I'd met them (and visited the bookshop) due to the author's skill.

This book is a prime example of show, don't tell--we learn who the characters are through their actions and interactions with the world, not through lengthy descriptions, and it's beautiful. Highly recommended for suspense readers, or anyone who's interested in a compelling, dark, complex tale.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

I love books about books (ala The Thirteenth Tale and The Shadow of the Wind) so I had very high expectations for Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. I thought, hurray, a book about a book that takes place in a bookstore. Unfortunately, MatBIB came up short.

Bright Ideas really isn’t about books or a book store, to be perfectly honest, and I am not entirely sure that it should even be the name of the book. Yes, the main plot point takes place at Bright Ideas and clues are left in books, but the books and the book store are so secondary to the story that it really doesn’t matter.

Now, it may sound like I did not enjoy this book, and that is simply not true. It was an enjoyable read, and I was definitely hooked into the mystery. It is a quick read, and the plot interesting, but I pretty much had a good portion of the story worked long before “the reveal”.

In the end, it was just not enough “book-about-books” for me and I was disappointed.

I didn't expect this book to be so dark, but it also had a quirky side that made it interesting. The author did a fantastic job of tying all the character's together as Lydia tried to figure out the reason behind Joey's suicide. If you like thrillers, this is a good read.

A beautiful, warm and funny novel, multilayered and enaging. This is the story of humans learning to really see each other and also to heal from past wounds. Obviously the setting has a lot in its favour too. Excellent characterization. A surprise favourite.

You can pretty much guarantee that any story featuring books or set in a library will be appealing to me, but there was something different about this which made me very excited to get an ARC.
When one of the regular customers at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is found hanging, with a picture of one of the staff as a young girl in his pocket, we know we're in for something odd...but nothing prepared me for this.
The characters are all rather lost - for one reason or another - and they seek solace. Each has their own story to tell, but we don't see how they link until almost the last minute.

Excellent book. Very well written. Well paced and with enough twists that you're not going to figure out who did what until the end. Looking forward to reading more books by this author.

I am a sucker for any book that takes place in a bookstore, involves a bookstore or bookseller, basically anything that feeds into my bibliophile nature. There is one great debut novel that spills out when turning the somewhat ordinary (sorry for that) cover of this book. There are so many good things about the book it’s hard to know where to start.

For me a novel usually entices and then grabs me by the quality of the characters and how well they are defined. A plot can be great but if the characters aren’t believable or interesting I usually find my myself having difficulty getting into the story. So let’s talk about some of the great characters.

Lydia is a bookseller who is great at what she does and she loves her work. Lydia has loved books since she was very small, her father used to be a librarian and toted her to work with him since she was just a babe. She is a great bookseller because she listens to her customers and is able to discern what type of book they might be looking for. She has a big heart and makes room in the bookstore for those that she calls her “BookFrogs”, most of them down on their luck types who find refuge in the cozy atmosphere of the book store. Lydia enjoys listening to their conversations and befriends many of them. Joey is one of the youngest and brightest of the bunch and she has gotten to know him quite well. One evening after “ the store is closing announcement” Joey doesn’t come down from the upper floor. As Lydia climbs the stairs to check on him she finds that he has hung himself and it’s too late to help him, although they try to resuscitate him and call an ambulance, he is already gone.

Joey has no family and has left his meager belongings to Lydia. As she goes through his things she finds a photo of herself and her best friend Raj taken when she was blowing out the candles on her 10th birthday. Lydia had never even seen this picture. She wonders why and how Joey has this photo and why it was important to him. There are crates of books in Joey’s apartment and upon closer inspection Lydia finds that Joey has cut out windows and linked books to one another in order to leave messages in code. The more Lydia reads, the more confused she is as to what Joey is trying to tell her.

Lydia is hiding many secrets of her own. Something very terrible happened when she was young and afterwards she spent many lonely years in a cabin in the woods with her eccentric father. They moved to this isolated spot because her father was trying to protect her but from what and who?

Raj, one of Lydia’s close friends from childhood, finds her from the photo in the newspaper about the suicide in the bookstore. With some trepidation she invites Raj back into her life and they work together to try to discern how Joey fits into their lives.

Lydia decides to contact the police detective, now retired, who worked on the case from her past and listens as he tells her his suspicions about the unsolved crime. She is unconvinced that what he is saying is the answer, could someone she loves really be the perpetrator of a crime that left Lydia scarred forever?

This book kept me guessing until the end and I was not expecting the outcome at all!! This book is a fantastic read, so much more than a mystery, it is full of emotion and love, even some laughter. The only flaw for me was the ending describing Lydia’s personal life after the crime is solved. I felt it was a little too quickly wrapped up and not quite believable but it didn’t take away from my total enjoyment in reading this book.

I will certainly be looking forward to the next book from this talented author!

Will also post to Amazon upon publication.

This was an unusual story - I didn't know what to expect when I started reading, given the rather obscure description, but it wasn't what I got. That's not at all a bad thing, just an observation about how complex this story was. In hindsight, the description was spot-on; while I was reading it, I was always just a little unsettled and off-kilter, never quite sure what was going on (in a good way). What a delight that was! I read a lot, and it's not all that often that I get to say that I really had no idea where the story was going - and especially that I get to say it as a compliment.

This was an unusual narrative, full of sidelines that eventually became main lines and secondary characters that became essential. It is populated by a cast of truly unique characters, each of whom exhibited more layers than seemed possible. The concept of secrets is almost a character in and of itself - truths are buried in geological strata and only uncovered through painstaking searches and painful realizations that allow the story(ies) of each character to unfold in their own time. And above all, it is a book about books - about the power that words and stories carry in the world, about how they can save and overwhelm in equal measure...

Matthew Sullivan has talent. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next - if it is even half as intriguing as this book, it'll be something indeed...

I'd rate this 4.5 stars.

How do you select the books you're going to read? Oftentimes I'm drawn to books written by authors I love (and sometimes I decide to give an author another shot), and other times I choose books and/or authors which have been hyped or those about which I've heard good feedback. And then sometimes, it's something intangible, like the cover design catches my eye, so it leads me to read the description, and I'm hooked.

This is the crazy way my mind worked when I decided to read Matthew Sullivan's terrific Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: I used to work in a bookstore, I love going to bookstores, and I really enjoyed Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (see my original review), one of the last books I read which took place in a bookstore. The gamble definitely paid off with this one—while it wasn't what I was expected, it was so much more.

Lydia is a bookseller at Denver's Bright Ideas Bookstore. Not only is she excellent at her job because she's well-read and perfectly satisfied to work where she is, she's tremendously patient with a group of people she calls the BookFrogs—the downtrodden, sometimes homeless regulars (most often men) who make the bookstore their surrogate home.

"Lydia's skills as a bookseller came mainly, she believed, from her ability to listen. A raging case of bibliophilia certainly helped, as did limited financial needs, but it was her capacity to be politely trapped by others that really sealed her professional fate. From bus stops to parties to the floors of the store, Lydia was the model of a Good Listener—a sounding board for one and all. Strangers and acquaintances and the occasional friend unloaded on her by the hour..."

One night, just as the store was closing, Lydia finds Joey, the youngest, most sensitive and inquisitive BookFrog, with whom Lydia has struck up a friendship of sorts, has committed suicide on the store's top floor. She knew that Joey had had his problems in the past, but he never seemed desperate enough to consider suicide. When she finds out that Joey has bequeathed Lydia his meager possessions—mostly a few random items and a milk crate full of books, most of which he bought from the store, she is saddened for the path his life took. But as she flips through his books, she discovered that pages in each were defaced, as if he was sending Lydia coded messages of some kind.

As Lydia tries to figure out what Joey was trying to tell her, she also finds among Joey's possessions an item from her own childhood, something she cannot figure out how he would have gotten. You see, Lydia has her own secrets as well, basically a childhood tragedy that has caused her to keep everyone, even her boyfriend, at arm's length, and never let them truly know who she is and what she has been through.

The messages in Joey's books, along with the resurgence of her own memories and insecurities, leave her on edge, a condition further exacerbated by the reappearance of one of her childhood best friends, as well as a dogged police detective and her estranged father. She is determined to find out what Joey was asking of her, and she realizes she needs to get answers to the questions that have haunted her own life since she was younger, even if that means reliving an experience that still chills her.

While this book is billed as a mystery, and there certainly are suspenseful elements of the plot, there is so much more to the story. This is a book about giving people a chance no matter who they are or what their background is. It's a book about friendship, sacrifice, the need to feel wanted and loved, the danger of secrets, the grief we keep hidden inside, and how the love of books can truly be pervasive. I found this book so surprising and so moving—even as I figured out how the plot would unfold I was so invested in Sullivan's characters I couldn't stop reading.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is really a special book, and Sullivan is truly talented as a storyteller. Because it straddles a few genres, I hope it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, because this is a fantastic read—full of emotion, a little suspense, and a lot of heart.

NetGalley and Scribner provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

I am breathless! I just finished this book (thank you, Net Galley, for a copy in exchange for my unbiased review) and had to say something about it immediately. It definitely goes down as my favorite book I've read this year. The author found the perfect blend of suspense, heart, mystery, and description. I had no idea how it would turn out until the author revealed it - always so nice when reading a mystery to be kept guessing the whole time.

I won't give any spoilers, but I will say a few things:

1. Put this on your to-read list now.
2. The quirk of many of the secondary characters could have the author writing a half-dozen spin-offs.
3. And - I wish I could give Joey a hug.

I enjoyed this book. I did not see how Joey's past played into the story until we were in the thick of things. I also loved the messages he left in the books.

Thank You Net Galley for the free ARC.

I enjoyed this book - first of all because it was set in Denver and I was familiar with the landmarks, second because it played in a bookstore and third because it turned out to be quite the suspenseful novel!
It all starts off with a suicide in a book store and a strange picture in the hand of the victim. This throws bookstore worker Lydia back into her unusual childhood. I don't want to tell you more in order not to spoil the mystery.

Very well-written debut mystery novel. Kept me interested all the way through and I was surprised with some of the connections in the story. I loved some of the characters - Lydia, with her traumatic past, and Joey, with his loneliness. Early in the book a young man hangs himself in the Bright Ideas bookstore - but this is just the beginning of the intricately woven mystery and the bits and pieces left by this man leads to surprising intersections of relationships and the truth of Lydia's past. Anyone who loves a good mystery will certainly enjoy this one.

My thanks to Matthew J. Sullivan and Scribner through NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.