It's being a while since I felt some type of way about a book, but reading this one, made me remember how much reading it's an adventure, how many emotion a single sentence can ignite. The storytelling is fantastic, althought not my 5 stars, just because in the end was the twist twisted so hard that end up untangled. However, fantastic book.

Generally, quite good, but absolutely NOT what I was expecting from the title or the cover, and the book has been mis-sold as a thriller. There is a mystery here, and it’s really easy to be caught up in it, but it was quite quick to unravel, and the focus on the characters and their emotional states was much more at the heart of the book, and far more compelling than the mystery side of it.

TW for a suicide in the first chapter of this book.

I do love books that feature bookshops and libraries and this book did appeal to me and i love the characters and the whole plot.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy for an honest review

I did read this book as soon as I received the arc but unfortunately did not leave a review of it. The author's prose is excellent, as is his storytelling. It's an excellent and fun read. I found the character arcs really interesting, and couldnt put it down. I look back on this book with fond memories and could see myself reading it again in the near future!

EXCERPT: Lydia heard the distant flap of paper wings as the first book fell from its shelf. She glanced up from the register, head tilted, and imagined that a sparrow had flown through an open window again and was circling the store's airy upper floors, trying to find its way out.

A few seconds later another book fell. This time it thudded more than flapped, and she was sure it wasn't a bird.

It was just past midnight, the bookstore was closing, and the final customers were checking out.

ABOUT 'MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE': When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind. 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.

MY THOUGHTS: My idea was to slowly wander through this read, a title from my backlist and this month's pick for the Goodreads.com Mystery, Crime and Thriller group read. Instead I picked this up this morning as I lay in bed listening to the rain beating steadily on the roof, and have continued reading through to the final wonderful sentence.

The writing is beautiful, the characters magnificently portrayed, and the plot absorbing. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore has layer upon layer of mystery that kept me intrigued from beginning to end. From Lydia herself, who is hiding a traumatic secret from her childhood, to the doomed Joey who leaves Lydia all his worldly possessions and a mystery to solve, the characters walk right off the pages. This whole book played out like a magnificent movie in my head.

I doubt I have ever read such a moving, imaginative debut novel. This was just the tonic I needed.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#MidnightattheBrightIdeasBookstore #NetGalley

I: @mickmatthew1 @randomhouse

T: #MatthewSullivan @RandomHouse

#contemporaryfiction #crime #domesticdrama #friendship #murdermystery #mystery

THE AUTHOR: Matthew Sullivan grew up in a family of eight children in suburban Denver, Colorado. After working as a bookseller at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he spent 17 years as a tenured instructor teaching writing, literature and film at a rural HSI community college in the high desert of central Washington State. He is married to a librarian, Libby, and now lives in Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island, in the Northwest corner of Washington, where he continues to teach and write.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Cornerstone, William Heinemann for providing a digital ARC of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan for review.

All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Copy received through Netgalley

~

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
by Matthew J. Sullivan

★★☆☆☆
328 Pages
POV: multi character, 3rd person, past tense POV
Content Warning: mentions of child in danger, murder, violence, domestic violence, child put up for adoption, social care system, ex-felons, suicide PTSD, cheating


What an odd book. That's the impression I was left with, when I finished. The more distance I have from it, the more I feel like it wasn't quite what it promised to be.

If I had to sum up my issues with the book in a single paragraph, this is what I'd say – the main character, Lydia, was overly dramatic, selfish and unlikable; the suicide of Joey made no sense, even after discovering his reason for doing it; the naming of a killer implies a serial killer, but that's not the case; I felt the justification of a character hiding the identity of the Hammerman for decades was extremely weak and unfounded, considering all we'd learned of the investigation; I didn't understand at all the immense estrangement of Lydia from her father; and the Epilogue was weak.

That's putting it all out there, blunt and to the point. Going into it all in more detail, the cons outweigh the pros, and I'd normally rate this a 2*, but the book has promise and the concept itself was clever, so I planned to give it a 3* for the potential that wasn't quite realised. However, the more I wrote in this review, the more I realised it was probably right to be a 2 or 2.5*.

My initial reaction to the book was conflict. I couldn't quite find the words to explain how the book was both intriguing and boring at the same time. For me, Lydia was a problematic central character. She was a first-hand witness to the original crime involving the Hammerman, but she had been hiding from the memories for so long that one single trigger to them sets her off on a tangent of obsessing over it and thinking that everything in her life revolves back around to it.
Blaming David for finding out about her past was such an overreaction, and every time someone seemed to recognise her from a well-publicised photograph in the newspaper, Lydia made it out to be some personal affront, as if they were accusing her of something. She always thought of herself as the centre of everything that was happening, which grew irritating really quickly. For example, the way that Joey's suicide was suddenly all about her, and she couldn't be swayed otherwise until the stark truth was right in front of her face.

A lot of the plot points felt like convenience rather than a well plotted or well planned chain of events. The photograph in Joey's pocket, conveniently partly sticking out for Lydia to find it. Lydia putting Raj's name on the forms, so that someone could recognise the name. Lydia resolutely avoiding her father – for no reason that made sense to me, considering all we'd learned about their relationship – until she'd discovered just enough for him to reveal the truth from years ago. The immensely unbelievable act of Lydia's father rampaging all around the crime scene, even touching the murder weapon. Lydia learning information that is so obviously leading to a conclusion, but she happens not to piece it together until it's convenient for the timeline.
Also, FYI – the convenient excuse for Joey's crime is that he spent 3 days without sleep – I have spent 3 days and 3 nights without a single second of sleep, with no food and little water. I have literally been that sick, that I've experienced that more than once, and that – in my opinion – is *not* enough time to make a person hallucinate. Especially not to the extent that Joey would commit such a crime.
I also found it odd that there was talk of Joey being an alcoholic and drug user, yet not even having enough money to buy a book for a few pound from the bookstore. This was never explained, and no one ever mentioned how or where Joey got money. We're told at one point that Lyle – another BookFrog member – paid for some of his books, but he would never have paid for drink or drugs, so what was Joey doing to pay for those things?

On top of that, there were issues with the execution and style of writing. Like the constant use of Lydia calling her colleagues “comrades”. I don't even understand where this came from, but it felt inauthentic to her character.
The writing was blocky, with sometimes only a single line gap to differentiate a scene change or timeline jump, and sometimes that wasn't even included, or there were random blank lines between paragraphs in the same scene/timeline, making it harder to follow. The formatting of my copy was all over the place.
The style of writing was more like reading a biography than a well crafted thriller/mystery. There was SO much telling and not enough showing that it got exhausting, after a while. There were literal pages of telling, after just one page of experiencing events, and actual chapters of reminiscing about past events. I'd actually say there was more exploration of the past than the present, which grew annoying after a while. The constant chop and change of timeline would have been easier to understand and follow if the formatting had been done better. But, because it wasn't, you sometimes went from past straight into present and didn't know until a second person popped into the scent to let you know the timeline.

That's what I meant by being both boring and intriguing. I liked the mystery around Joey's death, and how he left notes in his books for Lydia to find and decipher. That was clever...until you realised that it told us *nothing* of any use, and that Lydia ended up making a huge jump in logic rather than actually being told anything worth know.
But the constant ruminating and reminiscing in Lydia's POVs – and even when her father's POV showed up – dragged the story down. I know we needed to see what happened in the past, but a simple Prologue to show Lydia's POV of the night of the murder would have set the story and given us the information we needed, without constantly chopping back and forth.

Personally, I felt like Joey was such a huge part of the plot, but he got forgotten. Lydia was chosen as the main character, but I never felt close to her. I hated her quick switch from Raj being her bestie to latching onto the Bad Girl. I didn't like the way she treated David, or the insulting suggestion that they were only together because he was astoundingly handsome but disabled (he had fingers missing from his hand, which supposedly turned off other women), and that was the only reason they'd stayed together. *insert eye roll* As a disabled person, the way his disability was talked about by Lydia was often insulting and rude.
Joey was much more interesting, yet we learned so little about him. I find it hard to believe that he planned his death for days, possibly weeks, all for the reasons explained at the end of the book. There were other people in his life who could have taken care of him, or cared about him, and for some reason, they were all ignored. But, again – for convenience sake – if Joey hadn't died, there would have been no story, so...make of that what you will.

~

Overall, I'm sad that a story with such good potential didn't quite reach it, or match my expectations. I feel the blurb is slightly misleading, especially in terms of Joey and his final messages for Lydia. I think choosing Lydia for the main character was probably the only choice, but I didn't like her or relate to her in any way. She wasn't a sympathetic or approachable person. I found her quite selfish and abrasive, even egotistical at times, always wondering how this or that event would affect her, involve her, or if someone was doing all of this because of her. She had no concept or room in her thoughts to imagine it could ever be anything else.
The constant conveniences in the plot, and the constant info dumps that jumped around in the timeline, were dragging and slowed the reading. It felt like a slog to get through, and more of a biography than a novel. The book was so intricately involved in the past that it never really gave the present a chance to be explored properly. And, sadly, that meant there was so much back-and-forth – between the past and present, as well as between Lydia's POV and her father's – there wasn't room for much else.

Maybe if the two stories had been explored separately – for example, in a Prologue, a newspaper article, or in a single chapter, rather than multiple chapters – it would have been different. But, there was this constant exploration of Lydia's past, that never went anywhere until late into the story. And, by then, there were other ways to explore that part of her past.

Sadly, the book just didn't live up to expectations. I set out writing this review – and finishing the book – thinking this would be a 3* review, but when you add it all up, even the potential it had doesn't outweigh the negatives or really add up to anything above a 2.5.

Lovers of books meets murder mystery. Sounded like something right up my alley and though the writing was decent, the plot and characters were dry and I wasn't invested in the story until the last quarter.

I loved this unusual novel, it was not what I was expecting at all. The title and cover had given an impression of something quite whimsical, but instead it is an evocative murder mystery set in a medium sized US town, with a flawed but relatable heroine working to untangle the threads of her murky past. The obsession with books of many of the lead characters does lend the story a slightly fantastical air, which is perhaps a nice balance to the gory plot details which unravel as the crimes are unpicked! I was hungrily turning the pages to find out 'whodunnit', yet at the same time appreciate that the relationships between the characters weren't tied off in a cliche or saccharine way. Recommended read! Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity.

Working in the Bright Ideas Bookstore we meet Lydia who survived a terrible incident as a young child. Her path crosses with Joey, a lonely young man. How is it that their lives are connected? We follow Lydia's search to understand the messages Joey has left for her. This is a captivating story to the very last page.

This one is a strange, quirky book with a lot of feels.

Firstly, I like the novel. Its sadness, its emotions, the well-fleshed out characters...and the way the books can save us (or at least sedate the pain) in the cold world.
But I also need to say that the writing and plotting is uneven. Some parts are great but some feel far-fetched and/or a too art noir. Like the central point of Joey, who has been mysterically connected to the characters. Strange things happen, yes - but this novel is simply too full of plots and subplots. Less of them would probably made for a sharper execution.

Yet...I too well understand the novel's strangeness and the quirks. While I can criticize some parts as uneven and maybe a bit immature, there are parts that are speaking straight to my heart.

This was an enjoyable one. Somewhat of a mystery as a woman pieces together memories of a traumatic/violent event from her past. Would recommend if you want a mystery that’s not scary and not with an unreliable narrator.

Read this book so long ago and unfortunately didn’t post my review in time! Review to come, apologies for the delay

I requested this book because the premise appealed to my inner bookworm and I was not disappointed. This was a intriguing and thrilling novel that left you constantly wanting to know more

A novel for booklovers everywhere, but not a cute and cosy one! Lydia Smith works happily and contentedly at the Bright Ideas bookstore until she finds one of her favourite customers has committed suicide inside the bookshop. Lydia inherits his worldly possessions and with them, a mystery that she needs to solve which forces her to confront memories of her own childhood that she would rather keep buried.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore had a couple of things going for it. First and most importantly a bookstore. These kind of books always find a way onto my reading list. The main character being a bookseller also helps. Add to that some mysterious messages that are left and a death to investigate. It sounded like nothing could prevent this from being an amusing read.

And it was a nice read, just I had expected a little bit more from it. The past narrative from the main character made I couldn't focus on the ongoing investigation and I never really got into the story. While the writing was nice and made it an easy read, it wasn't anything special either.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was a strange read for me. Let me start off by saying I loved it. I really loved it. Once I got into the actual story, I was engrossed. Horrified. Gutted. I felt all the emotions I should have been feeling, but emotions I was not expecting to feel.

Once I realised it was in fact a thriller (which took me a while as it was so deeply rooted in my brain that I was not reading one!), and had shaken off my preconceptions, this book came alive. It was brilliant. Some of the events in it were so shocking, my heart was pounding as I was reading them. My heart ached for Joey and Lydia. It ached for Lydia’s father.

It was a great thriller; one of the best I have read. I just wish the genre had been more obvious from the get go!

This was a strange read for me. Let me start off by saying I loved it. I really loved it. Once I got into the actual story, I was engrossed. Horrified. Gutted. I felt all the emotions I should have been feeling, but emotions I was not expecting to feel.

Why was I not expecting to feel these things?

Well, the blue version of the book cover, which was the only one I had seen before reading it, planted the book, to me, in the contemporary fiction genre, or perhaps the cosy mystery bracket. Hence based on the cover and also the blurb I had read, I had no idea this was a thriller at all. I was expecting to read quirky book filled with adventure and puzzles. I was expecting it to be fairly light-hearted. It was anything but.

Once I realised it was in fact a thriller (which took me a while as it was so deeply rooted in my brain that I was not reading one!), and had shaken off my preconceptions, this book came alive. It was brilliant. Some of the events in it were so shocking, my heart was pounding as I was reading them. My heart ached for Joey and Lydia. It ached for Lydia’s father.

It was a great thriller; one of the best I have read. I just wish the genre had been more obvious from the get go!

I have been looking forward to starting this book for some time now. The premise caught my eye, the idea of it being a little bit of a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. A local down and out, Joey, who frequents the Bright Ideas Bookstore, he strikes up a friendship with Lydia, a bookseller with a broken history. Having survived an horrific murder at a sleepover as a child, Lydia struggles through life making the best of things that she can. One night Joey is found in the bookstore, having taken his own life, by Lydia. That alone was unexpected enough, but the discovery of a photo from Lydia’s childhood birthday with two young friends only adds to the confusion.

From this shocking revelation the story unravels into an avalanche of mysteries and secrets. As a massive fan of mystery novels I was really excited to see where this one would lead. Unfortunately that excitement was short lived. It took until well beyond the halfway mark for the mysteries to begin to make sense and the rest of the book followed suit.

While the book was unpredictable in terms of the scope and nature of the mysteries it really did not rescue the book for me. It felt like it ground along far too slowly, and with a lead in Lydia who as far too inward-looking, I really struggled to push through. I found it a real struggle as it limped from one revelation to the next. Much as I wanted to like it, it just moved too slowly. I am sure for many, the mysteries and the plot will be entertaining, but my predilection for fast-paced, high-octane mysteries this did not work for me.

Interesting book and definite one to read if you love books, reading about books and bookstores. A treat for book-lovers.

I could not get through this book due to sensitive content. Maybe at a different time I would actually enjoy this book.