The unique framework of this novel makes it a compelling read. The chapters of a developing novel are interspersed with the reactions, written as emails, of a friend and fellow author as he proofreads each chapter. THe author is Austrailian and the correspondent American, so he advises her on colloquialisms and details she would not know. IN this way a second storyline is introduced, as is the 2020 situation of the Covid pandemic as well as the Austrailian wildfires (which keep the author from taking her research trip to the US). I did feel like the correspondent storyline could have been a little more detailsed in its resolution. Likewise, the main plot was resolved a little quickly without a thorough explanation of the original crime. But a quick and engaging read with a premise I've not encountered before.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

This five star read is the next one I’ll be recommending to all my friends. With great characters and a puzzling mystery, you’ll enjoy every minute of this book.

The narrator is writer Winifred “Freddie” Kincaid who is doing research in the Boston Public Library when there is a blood curdling scream, and a body is found. No one is allowed to leave until questioned. The random four people at Freddie’s study table become fast friends and the reader will suspect all as being the possible killer.

My favorite character of the story, however, is “Leo” who writes letters to Hannah, the story’s author, with his ideas, edits and suggestions to add to her library story as it unfolds. His thoughts get darker and creepier as the story develops. This is a clever device which adds another fun dimension to the story.

The Woman in the Library is my pick as a winning book for all readers. My thanks to #PoisonedPenPress and #NetGalley for this ARC.

As usual I didn't know much if anything about this book when I picked it up! I was intrigued from the start. I really loved the characters and how they developed and bond throughout the story...the author really made me ponder the characters and the POV in a good way. I especially like the way the author introduces an outside perspective in the pen-pal/self-named "editor". His contribution to the story was something new and interesting. When his emails dropped into the story it made me reflect on the story and the characters a little deeper.
The plot at times seems a little predictable or maybe even Nancy Drew-ish meets gossip girl. It has a or YA feel to it at times. For me this did not hinder my enjoyment of the book at all because it also has a layer of depth that really made me think as a reader. The way this story was written is not something I have experienced before and for that reason I definitely enjoyed it! It's a quick and fast paced read!
Thank you NetGalley for my ARC on this e-book!

2022 has, so far, been a good year for Australian crime fiction, with several outstanding books and some very original releases. Continuing this run of originality is Sulari Gentill’s The Woman In The Library. Sulari, best known for her Australian historical crime novels featuring Rowland Sinclair, has branched off into an intriguing new direction with The Woman In The Library, which is a mystery story within a mystery story.

The book opens with four apparent strangers; Winifred, Cain, Marigold and Whit sitting at the same table in the Boston Public Library when a bloodcurdling scream breaks the silence. The scream and the resultant ruckus breaks the working mood of the four and they head to a nearby café for coffee. It turns out that the scream was from a woman who was murdered, and her body temporarily hidden. The four become friends and, eventually, possible murder suspects. However, it very quickly becomes clear that the four strangers are characters in a book being written by an Australian author, Hannah, who because of COVID is unable to travel to America to research her novel. So each chapter of her book is sent to Leo Johnson, a struggling writer and fan of Hannah’s previous work. Leo is based in Boston and shares his email opinions and suggestions with Hannah at the end of each chapter. Meanwhile within the main story, the central character, Australian author Winifred ‘Freddie’ Kincaid who is in Boston on a writers’ scholarship, decides to write a novel about the events at the library, but finds herself caught up in a real murder mystery.

This is a very inventive novel, that works as a mystery and a crime novel, as well as a reflection on the art of writing. It sounds confusing, but Sulari makes it work with consummate ease and it far easier to follow than my clumsy outline above suggests. The story flows along at a smooth pace and there is a clever twist at the midway point, which changes the direction of the novel. The characters in the novel are well fleshed out and engaging, and Leo’s reflections are informative and witty, and quite revealing about the writing process. The Woman In The Library is also quite a good murder mystery, with the murderer of the woman in the library nicely hidden until the end.

Weaved within the novel, and Leo’s comments, are interesting reflections about homelessness, race and ethnicity in novels and the challenges of writing during a pandemic:

“The world is on the cusp of being overwhelmed by fear and rage, a dystopia beyond any we might have imagined in our writings.”

My only quibble is that the framing device of Leo’s comments is not as convincingly resolved as Freddie’s story, but this is minor, and overall The Woman In The Library is an impressive and very enjoyable novel. Along with Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, it is one of the most original crime novels I read in quite a while.

This book tells two stories in one, and that’s a trick I LOVE in books. The main story is unfolding as our MC, an Australian writer who has a fellowship in Boston to write her mystery novel, hears a scream while writing at the Boston Public Library. The story follows her and her three table mates as they bond over their concern and confusion and try to solve the mystery of the scream. The second story is layered at the end of every chapter, told through emails that Leo, a beta reader, sends to Hannah, an author, full of notes on each chapter of her manuscript! So not only are you engaging with the mystery, you are reading Leo’s engagement with the mystery. Hard to explain but it was really a fun concept! I also thought I had bested the author for so long I thought I knew what was what and then the final plot twist GOT ME SO GOOD I felt like such a fool!

I think the part that became less fun here was that a lot of the writing in this book fell flat. The character work was weird, and there was some misdirection that I thought might just be bad writing, and there was some bad writing I thought was misdirection. Leo became much harder to read as time went on and I think the book tried to tackle too many Issues. I love when fiction takes a stance, but you don't need to take several stances per book, when the book also has a mystery! It was way too much.

Overall, not going to be in my top anything of the year but I did think the approach was really fun and the mystery did keep me interested enough to finish it! Very grateful for the advance copy of this book I received via NetGalley in exchange for this honest review!!

This book kept my attention, but it was not as stellar as all the hype that is building for it.

Summary
Main Plot
Freddie is a writer working in the Boston Public Library observing 3 of her table-mates when she hears a woman's scream. The scream bonds the 4 table-mates - Cain, Whit, & Marigold - and the 4 become fast friends. Later, they find out that the scream led to the murder of a local journalist & their lives with the murder grow entangled from there.

Subplot
Australian writer Hannah receives correspondence/critique from an increasingly creepy Bostonian pen-pal as she writes the novel about Freddie.

Thoughts
This has been way over-hyped to me. Although nothing wrong with this, it read like a young adult novel. I kept wanting more depth to all the characters and plot-line, but it read like a Hallmark Channel movie, which again, nothing wrong with that, but it's been hyped as "the next big thing."

If it hadn't been talked up so much to me, I think I would have enjoyed it more. I did like the layout with the story within a story within a story. I thought the twists were great, and it kept me wanting to read it. However, the characters were very one-dimensional, the plot seemed juvenile, and it was just lacking overall.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

Four strangers are brought together and bonded over their shared experience of hearing a woman scream while at the Boston Public Library. Little did they know, one of them was a murderer. As they all get to know each other more, some bizarre and unnerving events begin to happen. As they try to navigate and understand what is happening, they will uncover some secrets about one another and attempt to figure out who the murderer is.

I really enjoyed this read. Full disclosure, mysteries are one of my favourite genres. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about the story-within-a-story, but it really grew on me. I loved how the stories mirrored each other in ways. At the end of each chapter I was left hypothesizing what was going to happen next in each story line. There was something about the ending that was missing for me but I could definitely see how the author may have left it that way in case of a sequel (which I would definitely read).

Thank you NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for the ARC!

This was a creative and fun mystery, a story within a story about an Australian woman writing a mystery novel and her American correspondent who writes her letters with advice and feedback.
The murder mystery is pretty straightforward and an easy read, and the letters add a sense of growing horror about this man and his obsession with the author. I would have even liked a third layer showing us the fictional author’s perspective on things, but that could bog down the tale. A lot happens that is unwritten but understood. An epilogue, though, would have been fantastic. I also didn’t understand the meaning of the last few lines of the book and needed a bit more closure.
After the initial exposition, the story lagged a bit, but about halfway through it really picked up and I quite enjoyed it!
Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

I read this book with total concentration but I still picked the wrong murderer!.
I loved the four main characters, Freddie, Whit, Marigold and Cain. They all had totally different personalities, some with odd traits, but as they all heard the scream in the library, they became close, trying to work out who is the murderer. I'm not convinced they would have been friends if they hadn't met under those circumstances.. As the story progresses, there are more characters slotted in to confuse matters more so the suspect list potentially gets longer!. I loved it!.
It was a joy to read and I highly recommend this to any mystery lovers!! I hope you fare better than me with the suspect list!!!!
Many thanks to Netgalley for the free arc book for an honest review.
#Netgalley, #panmacmillan, #sularigentill.

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

I really wanted to like this story, but ultimately it was not a good fit for me. The writing style was a bit disjointed and I felt like I was being taken out of the story at times. I really admired the concept and the attempt to bring it to life.

When I read the synopsis of this book, I knew I had to request it! Since I'm from Boston I knew I would love reading about all of the familiar landscapes. I was a regular at the Boston Public Library for the longest time, and the descriptive writing style really brought back memories.
I was immediately drawn in by the main character, and the fact that all the characters were extremely complex. The letters included at the end of each chapter brought so much to the story, and what was going on in our main characters writing.
The fact that there was a story inside the story was very intriguing. The way the author ended each chapter with a power sentence was great. The plot twists were some of the best I've ever read, and cannot wait to read more by this author!

This book was certainly unlike any I've ever read. I loved the two intertwining stories. I also loved the creative way the author found to include the pandemic in one storyline, without including it in the other. I know that authors face a difficult decision on whether or not to include the pandemic in stories, but honestly we've all lived it, I really don't want to read an entire story surrounding the pandemic. This book was just the perfect amount of pandemic sprinkled throughout. I don't want to say much more about this book because I don't want to give anything else away. But just know it was an incredible mystery and well worth the read!

Thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the eARC! All reviews are my own.

THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING!! It gets the award for most unique mystery/thriller I've ever read. I absolutely loved how it felt like a classic game of Clue - It was Professor Plum with a candle stick in the library! Not only that, but it was written as a story within a story within a story. Ok, mind completely blown. The authors notes in the back are such cool insight into how she came up with the story. This book is the perfect bookclub book. All the stars.

I was so incredibly disappointed by this book. Wah, wah - yet another one of my most anticipated reads for 2022 bites the dust. What I was expecting from the description was a clever locked-room type whodunit, where four strangers are gathered in the Boston Public Library, they hear a scream, and they start talking - only to discover that one of them is involved in the murder they just heard. The book was so wildly different from this that I re-read the description wondering if I imagined it, but the description is so vague that my coming to that conclusion was not unreasonable.

What happens instead is that the four strangers gathered in the BPL become friends, weirdly close friends for not knowing anything about each other and given such a small amount of time. You do learn in the first chapter that one of the four is a murderer, but it takes what felt like ages to actually get to who that is. The plot went in several random directions with the characters themselves, as well as with this whole framing concept of the story being told via chapters sent to an external reader, with something fishy happening with this reader as well.

I found myself slogging through this book, kind of racing to get to the end. I didn't connect with any of the characters or their plots and was just rushing to get to the big twist or conclusion. When I got there, I was like, "Seriously? That's all?" I feel so bad saying this, but I'm just being honest here. I thought the interlude chapters of the letters from Leo were distracting, not creepy like some others found them. The actual murder that brings them together in the beginning hardly comes up at all except when a character seems to remember it. The whole plot just felt disjointed, disorganized, and consequently, not compelling.

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC via Netgalley.

I could not finish this. I made it about 1/3 of the way through, and it is just not good in my opinion. I love thrillers and mysteries and the two different stories in one is very confusing and I feel, unnecessary.

I genuinely enjoyed this book, mostly because Gentill’s prose is compelling and lovely. As usual for me, I didn’t solve the mystery because I’m the world’s worst detective, but I do always appreciate when it’s hard to decipher but all the clues are there for you to put together if you pay attention (and are smarter than me), which was definitely the case here.

For some reason, I thought this was going to be more of a locked-room story, so I was confused when I started but I’m glad it turned out to be more expansive. I didn’t enjoy the narrative choice of the letters because it didn’t add much to the story in my opinion, and I think the arc of the fiction part was a more cohesive tale. But I did appreciate the attempt by the author to try something new.

I did love the parallels between a character stating that everyone writes romance, and this having a solid romance storyline without taking away from the main action. And I appreciated the author did the research to make this almost perfect in its Boston representation (almost because no way does any Bostonian casually drive to Walmart). All in all, I found this to be an fun and captivating read!

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley for the ARC!

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This story has a very interesting format and was more meta than I was expecting from reading the synopsis. The story you're reading of 4 strangers meeting in a library after a woman screams (and then eventually is found dead) is actually a novel being written, though you never really meet the author. Additionally, you get excerpts of a man writing critique feedback to the author after each chapter.

There are a lot of cool discussions in this book about the process of writing a book and the important decisions you have to make (i.e. Do you include the pandemic in a contemporary story? What does it mean if you don't? What does it mean if you don't address the race of a character? etc.), so if you're particularly interested in the art of writing then you may enjoy this one even more.

I enjoyed this story, but I had a bit of trouble feeling fully connected to it for a few reasons:

1. I thought this was going to be a locked room mystery (one of my favorite tropes) but it turns out to be more of a runaway train style story. The characters leave the library very soon after the scream, but they stay connected for the coming weeks as more threats are introduced into their lives. I had trouble buying into the idea of these strangers staying connected after a very brief encounter, and it made the story feel a bit directionless because I didn't feel a center of gravity to the story pulling them all together.

2. Because of the nature of the story being that you're reading what is presumably a first draft of a novel that a character is writing, it felt a bit incomplete as a story, even though it takes up the bulk of the novel (Are you tracking? I know, the meta stuff is a bit confusing haha.) If you remove the meta nature of it and the feedback letters from another character (which develops its own subplot) it doesn't feel fully developed as a mystery/thriller story.

3. I was left feeling unsatisfied by the end. As I mentioned, there is a subplot developed with the person who is giving critique notes at the end of each chapter and I expected that to have a little bit more significance in the story by the end. You also never really get much of a sense of the character who is writing the novel, and I was expecting her character to have a little more significance as well.

All that being said, I still enjoyed reading this one and think it was a fine story. I would pick something up from this author again.

Featured in this reading vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eV4woq8_0E

This is a brilliant thriller. It begins in Boston university library when four strangers happen to be together when a scream is heard in the library. Freddie is a female Australian graduate student, Freddie, Marigold, Cain and Whit begin an unlikely friendship based around the murder of Caroline. Was it her who screamed or was it a coincidence? The four start to look into what happened. Freddie begins to have a close relationship with Cain. He had been in prison and everything points to him being the killer. Freddie herself is not sure so starts looking at the other two. Whit is from an old and wealthy Boston family. Marigold just wants to be a good friend to Freddie and is attracted to Whit.
Leo is the person Freddie contacts with her theories He asks if Cain is black which would have made him more likely to be considered as the murderer. We are never told this by Freddie and Leo’s comments are an odd intervention to the story. The ending is very violent as the murderer is a dangerous psychopath.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for the opportunity for review. My review opinion is my own. I was intrigued by the premise of this book which reminds me of the best mysteries of the late great Agatha Christie. I was not disappointed. This is a fascinating story of four strangers in the Boston Library brought together by a murder. Unable to leave they bond under these strange circumstance and everyone becomes a suspect. Each very different yet they find commonalities among themselves. The sleuth was intriguing and kept me turning pages into the night. Very well done mystery with wonderful charcters. I highly recommend this book for your reading enjoyment.

Such a fun twisty read! This is a novel within a novel, and both are quite good. I love the character of Freddie (Winifred) and her new friends, Marigold, Whit, and Cain. They meet thanks to a scream in the Boston Public Library. Each have some secrets they are hiding from each other, some more dangerous than others. . . I don't want to say too much more about either plot, because I don't want to ruin it for anyone. Just read the book - it's good!

"In every person's story, there is something to hide...

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer."

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.