When they say don’t judge a book by its cover, I think also applies to don’t judge a book by its name. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore sounded like a charming read and I thought it would be along the lines of Katarina Bivald or Jenny Colgan.

It starts off in a bookshop, with a bibliophile doing what she does best, selling books.

So far, so good.

I –foolishly – was expecting it to continue as such. A soulmate, some true love and a lot of book recommendations thrown in, perhaps.

I was not expecting a suicide within the first chapter. Consider that a trigger warning for anyone thinking of reading this book!

The book in a nutshell is messed up lives, messed up relationships and a messed up puzzle that might reveal the answers to far more than it intended.

Lydia is a haunted woman. She has spent years hiding from her past after witnessing the gruesome murder of her best friend and her friend’s parents. She is the girl under the sink, ‘Little Lydia’ – everyone has heard of her while Lydia just wants to forget.

When confronted with her past in the form of a photograph from her tenth birthday, she learns the past can never be forgotten. Drawn back to the detective who took the case, Lydia must face some uncomfortable truths to figure out what happened that day.

It isn’t the only mystery, however. Why did the dead man – whom she had only recently met – have a photograph of her childhood? When a long-lost friend also arrives back in her life, Lydia soon realises this puzzle is far greater than one suicide note: her past and her present have caught up with one another with unexpected consequences.

Lydia was an okay character. I empathised with her, but didn’t detect any real development over the course of the book. She broke off a relationship with someone who loves her because she learns that he knew about her past and not told her – despite her keeping said past a secret. Her reaction felt shallow to me. Thankfully, it narrowly avoided the cliché of her getting together with the long-lost friend.

I didn’t completely engage with the secondary characters. Raj is a love-sick man trying to rekindle his feelings from childhood. Her father is eccentric and more destroyed by the past than Lydia herself. Her colleagues at the bookstore, including Lyle – a regular customer – felt as if they were there to be convenient sounding-boards for Lydia’s ideas, or to point her in the right direction, rather than developing themselves.

The pacing was fair though, and, if I’m honest, I didn’t predict how all of these events tied together. Some of it was just a little too much of a coincidence, but it made the story work and heightened the emotional outcome as more characters are affected than you think.

An interesting read with some tension and plot-twists. Not something I would go back to re-read though.

A very uncomfortable read for given my recent bereavement. The mystery left behind by Joey after his suicide is particularly difficult and disturbing.
It was well written and edited however my personally place when I read this book had only two words attached to the review in my book-
Too Much!

I’ll go back to this as it has potential and is actually a good story.

From the cover I thought this was going to be a bit of a magical type of book, how wrong I was and how so much better it was too. It's been on my TBR for a while and the thing about just seeing the title is that I had forgotten what the book was going to be about.



The words "Bookstore" had enticed me in yet again but I was not disappointed on what I found inside this book. A really unusual story that was so beautifully told and also so gripping that I read most of the book in one day. I just couldn't put it down.

When Lydia is left a pile of books by a customer at the Bookstore and finds they contain snippets cut from the pages in a random pattern a mystery ensues. I loved this part of the book the most, so fascinating to follow the clues. The mystery is intriguing, what follows begins a trail that leads Lydia to an answer she nor the reader ever expects.

At the heart of the book is a tragedy but the humour and easily readable style means that you don't really ever feel threatened by it, just drawn into the book completely. Great characters vividly drawn means that the book just never gets boring.

I'm giving this book five out of five stars. My thanks to netgalley for an ARC to review.

I have to admit, this book was not what I expected at all, but I enjoyed it a lot once I got into it properly. That did take a significant portion of the book, but there was a moment when it all just suddenly clicked and I didn't want to put the book down. Set primarily in the bookstore of the title, our lead character is Lydia, one of the booksellers. The Bright Ideas Bookstore is something of a haven for people who don't quite fit in, or are acing hard times, and one night, as she's closing up, Lydia comes across the body of one of these people after he's hanged himself. This prompts Lydia to find out what would lead Joey, her favourite 'bookfrog' to do such a thing, but it leads into her own past in ways she could never have imagined. Matthew Sullivan is brilliant at drip-feeding bits of information throughout the story, and although I did guess some of the conclusion slightly before the end, I was utterly gripped by the mysteries unfolding in front of me. I highly recommend it, just be aware that it's slow to get into, and parts of it are quite explicitly gory.

Provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

I really liked this book. It was well written and the characters really were fabulous. The build up of information and tension and drama was good. It kept me turning the pages. It made sense. That was until the twist at the end. It came as a surprise, yet it was all too pat. I wanted more from such a well written, well thought out book. It had the potential to be really mind blowing.. and yet...it missed the mark at the end for me.

Very readable but sometimes implausible! I liked the way the mystery unravelled at the end and I thought the whodunnit element was interesting and all was tied up well.

I found this book both engaging (in that the central mystery was intriguing) and touching. The characters were well drawn and likable in flawed, human ways, not least of all the young man whose suicide in the opening pages of the book drives the story.

It's quite a feat to make us feel for someone who we never directly interact with on the page, but despite knowing how things ended I found myself wishing for a happy ending even as the novel re-traced his path to his end at the beginning of the novel.

This one stayed with me for a while. Recommended.

Loved this book! Very clever and well written, kept me hooked until the end! I have already recommended it to family and friends!

I don’t usually request books blindly. But I was intrigued by the title. It definitely worth it. Fantastic plot, interesting characters. I really enjoyed reading it.

A mystery story set in a favourite place for readers and writers - a bookstore! And, with the 'Tattered Cover' as it's backdrop, one of Denver's famous spots, it makes it more intriguing and engaging. I enjoyed this read. Bookstores are disappearing in some parts of the world and setting a story in one is a clever idea. We visit to browse, to fill our shelves and linger with a coffee - but to read a book set in an emporium of books is a whole other thing. Original and clever, this is a book to read and enjoy.

I chose this book because a mystery set in a bookshop sounded like my type of thing.
When I started reading I realized that this book was totally not as I had expected. Books and the bookshop play an important but secondary role. While the mystery is more concerned with human relationships.
The main character Lydia is reserved and it takes quite a while for the reader to get to know her, wand the story starts on a sad note with a suicide of Joey one of the bookstore patrons of whom Lydia is obviously fond.
As the story follows Lydia trying to discover who Joey was, the reader learns about the trauma from Lydia’s childhood when she was present in the house while The Hammerman brutally murders Lydia’s school friend and the friends family.
Even though the scene with the Hammerman is truly terrifying and the story touches on deep sadness and some of the darker aspects of human relationships this book is not depressing or self-indulgently introspective.
I felt a certain sense of quiet about the narrative and the conclusion provided an emotional satisfaction concerning the fates of characters to whom I had become quite attached.

An unusual but gratifying read.

Wow, this was an incredible read! Sullivan has drawn me in from page 1 and left me saying Oh my god at the end. This story is filled with drama, violence, murder, suicide, love and sadness. What more could you ask for from a book?

This is a moving, intelligent and suspenseful novel surrounding the mystery of a bookseller's death in an American bookstore. I loved the many layers of puzzles, personality and insight, which was particularly well-received by this bibliophile.

I was initially drawn to this book by the cover, and was glad I chose it. I was transported into a wonderful bookshop set in Denver Colorado. The story begins with Lydia finding a fellow 'Bookfrog' hanging and how she get involved in the mystery of what has happened. It weaves its way through time and links back to horrific experiences from the past and takes you on a journey to work through to a very satisfying end. I would recommend this book.

A story about a mysterious suicide, the protagonist’s mysterious past and how it should all be connected was enough to catch my attention.
This was another book that was hard to put down for me. I was so curious to know who Joey Molina was, who the Hammerman was, but most of all the journey to finding out was an enjoyable experience. I will admit that there were too much coincidences for the story to be entirely realistic. I had actually expected to nobody ever finding out who the Hammerman was and it probably made more sense than it all coming together so neatly. However I chose to overlook this since the writing was so lovely. The characters on the other hand, did feel very realistic. I fell in love with the bookstore and its interesting

Bring together mystery with bookstores and you've got two of my favourite things ever in one place. Very much enjoyed this.

This book wasn't really for me but I thought it was really well written!

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this book. I didn't get hooked in and though I knew I should be, I wasn't interested in the mystery or the characters at all.

The minute I read the following review by Jess Walter (author of Beautiful Ruins) on the back cover of the book, I knew I was in for a great read:

"With Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, Matthew Sullivan has written - with great panache and suspense - a smart, twisty crime novel filled with compelling characters set in a world that book lovers will adore."

Now, it's no secret that I'm a massive fan of twisty crime novels. And it's abundantly clear that I'm head over heels in love with books. So, it then followed that, all things being equal, I was going to love this book. Well Bookworm's, the good news is that I did, I adored it!

Right from the opening page, with it's clear and precise prose, until the final few lines of this book, I loved every minute of it...okay, perhaps not the epilogue, but more about that later. The story was clever and totally engaging. Lydia's past, and her encounter with the Hammerman was cleverly interwoven into the present day story, being that of Joey's suicide in the Bright Ideas bookstore.

Even though the beginning of this book was a tad slow, it soon picked up pace and I was totally gripped by Lydia's past, the Hammerman, her father, Joey, Raj, and so many other characters and sub-plots in this book. I also loved trying to figure out Joey's cryptic messages, the ones left for Lydia to find inside his books, the broken letters and incomplete words having me stumped on more than one occasion.

This book's cover is also deceptive, and hides just quite how dark this book is, a fact that took me slightly by surprise. This book touches on topics like suicide, murder, physical and psychological abuse and a number of other heavy topics, but the story as a whole is just so gripping, with enough lighthearted moments to make it a pleasurable read without being overly heavy.

My praise is high for this one, but the book wasn't absolutely faultless and if I had to be critical, I'd say that the epilogue let this one down slightly. I found it a strange ending, and not one that I personally would have chosen. But hey, I'm not the author, and he clearly thought that the ending was great. For me, it took this read from 5 stars to 4.5 stars, and because I don't award half stars, this one ends up with a solid, amazing, resounding 4 stars from me! (Okay, this may seem harsh in light of my praise, but when I award 5 stars, I want the book to be faultless in my eyes).

I hope that this review has been enough of a teaser for all of you, and that you rush out and buy this book as soon as possible. I loved it, despite the strange ending, and I'm more than happy to sing its praises.