Initially I had mixed feelings about this book. In the beginning I felt the author was trying too hard to be literary. I frequently had to look up words in the dictionary (not that this is a bad thing, but it took me out of the story to do so).

The Archivist is a disturbing work with a great story of a twisted romance and the murder of the female in the relationship. In essence, Nadia Fontaine, the archivist working on the papers of Raymond West, a writer short-listed for the Nobel Prize. She and West fall in love, co-author an Anais Nin type sexually explicit book. Shortly thereafter, Nadia is found dead, presumably drowned while surfing. Emily Snow, another archivist, is hired to complete the cataloguing of the West papers. She soon comes to feel that Fontaine was murdered rather than drowned and embarks on the quest to learn the truth.

The Archivist is a dark work that required considerable effort to read. Then I stumbled into a sex scene that I considered putting up for The Guardian’s Bad Sex Awards and nearly quit. However, I persevered and, towards the last half of the book, I couldn’t put it down and stayed up at 4:30 a.m. to finish it. I enjoyed it too because it was about writing and how authors (and other artists) feed off each other.

I thought I would really enjoy The Archivist, because I'm a sucker for stories that have to do with archives. Unfortunately, I could not even bring myself to finish it, which very rarely happens. I found the style of writing unnecessarily verbose and complicated; at times I wondered if the author was purposely choosing the word from the thesaurus with the most syllables. There were also several times just in the first few chapters where I felt irritated by certain descriptions of the way the female protagonist that made it clear to me the author was not a woman.
Maybe others will feel differently, but this book just didn't do anything at all for me.

I was very excited to read a mystery/thriller about my past profession: archivist! But, I had a tough time really getting into the book itself. It was a big long-winded, and at times felt very pretentious. I don't ever anticipate ever being made to feel dumb while reading a book, but every other word just screams "verbose" and made it hard to get into. Overall, getting past those few hurdles, I enjoyed it.

Emily Snow is an up and coming archivist who has replaced Nadia after her untimely death organizing the collection of an esteemed author Ray West. The action of this novel takes place in and around a university that is UC San Diego but called something else. Nadia was engaged in a torrid love affair with West, and collaborated with him on a semi-autobiographical novel about their relationship. The longhand original text has gone missing, but Snow is diligent in her duties and tracks down the notebooks. That lands her in trouble with people who might have caused Nadia's demise and are making Snow's life difficult. IF you are familiar with the northern area of San Diego County, or the world of university archives, you might enjoy the very realistic situations and scenes that are described in this novel. Plus, your vocabulary will be enlarged greatly as Pickett's language is filled with lots of rare descriptions that are both evocative and sensitive to the unfolding steamy affair between archivist and her subject. While I grew impatient towards the end of the novel, I still give it high marks and it held my interest. Snow, at one point, tells West, "I am deeply sorry if what I brought here is a truth you don't want to face." But West's coming to terms with his latest masterwork and Snow's dogged determination to figure out what happened to her predecessor archivist, will keep you engaged until the last page.

Wow - so much to say! This is a long read, 750 pages, but reads like a fast paced thriller. I loved the main characters as well the secondary ones. The characters were very well developed and easy to visualize as was the setting of La Jolla, Del Mar and Bird Rock. At times a bit verbose and pretentious the story itself is so gripping and so well conceived that I could not stop reading it. I can easily see this being developed for the screen.

This was a slow burn story to me! But a good quick read! I love books like this.
When archivist Nadia Fontaine is found dead of an apparent drowning, Emily Snow is hired by Regents University to finish the job she started.
There is some romance which I though was a great add! A wonderful book!

This was an interesting take on the archival and academic world! At times I found the dialogue a bit stilted, but I loved the concept of an archival thriller. The concept was spectacular, and that kept me going until the end. I've been waiting for an archival mystery or eerie story for a while, so I thought this was a great take on things!

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Emily Snow has been hired to collate the papers of Pulitzer Prize winning author Raymond West. Or, more accurately, she’s been hired to take over the job after her predecessor, Nadia Fontaine, dies under mysterious circumstances. Emily is on tenterhooks as she maneuvers around West’s wife, Rebecca, who has promised to donate $25 million dollars to the Memorial library at Regent University. As Emily begins her work, she begins to believe that some of West’s papers are missing. In a search for those documents she stumbles across correspondence between West and Nadia, emails that seem anything but professional. Which raises the question about Nadia’s death. Was it really an accidental drowning? Could it have been a suicide, or something even more sinister? This is a complex and twisted work of dark academia

Great romance and thriller. I enjoyed this story thoroughly. The characters are excellent. I highly recommend it.