This thrilling read had an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all. 5 enthusiastic stars, a total delight.

So... a murder in a library already had me sold by page one, but the way the story is written (different from everything i have seen), adding to the atmosphere that was creates and the twists were what got me fascinated by this book. Usually I give some feedback about the carachters and the storyline but I would genuinely recommend you going blind for this one, trust me, it's worth the read.

I am brand new to this author but oh oh boy was I impressed. The writing style is brilliant and draws you in instantly. The intrigue and suspense throughout the story keeps you guessing with so many plot twists you might get whiplash figuring out this whodunit. This was a hit.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc

“The mystery writers, the historical novelists, the political thriller writers, the science fiction writers… everybody but the people who write instruction manuals, is writing romance. We dress our stories up with murders, and discussions about morality and society, but really we just care about relationships.”
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Welcome to The Woman In The Library: A story about an author writing a book about an author writing a book. It is infused with murder and suspense at every level, where you will doubt each character over and over again in a loop until the last reveal. Everyone is suspicious (in both senses that they are questionable, and that they are distrustful of each other.)

Although the ending felt a bit rushed and the plot-twist not all-too shocking, it was the ride up until that point that was really the pleasure of this book. I loved that I was forced to change my mind about the culprit at the end of each chapter, while watching the tensions and the creepy-factor rise bit by bit.
A very enjoyable mystery/thriller for sure, particularly with the double-layered narration.

I was in a little slump when I started this book and thankfully this book helped get me out of it. The approach the author takes to writing the story is unique and kept me guessing throughout. The characters that were pulled together in the story all have their own issues and leave you reason to suspect each of them as being guilty of the murder. Plus the subplot - genius addition to the story!

Thanks to NetGalley for the read!

A thriller/mystery set inside a library? A dead body inside a library? Sign me up!

Winifred known as Freddie is an aspiring novelist trying to write her novel inside Boston Public Library. While in the library, she meets Cain, Marigold and Whit, three fellow novelists and while they were getting to know each other, they heard a woman screaming. Few minutes later, they find out that a woman was murdered and the woman's name is Caroline. The police suspect Cain as the murderer as he had a prison record and that Caroline's father was the judge at his hearing. Freddie who is in love with Cain is the only one who believes in innocence while the rest of them thinks Cain is capable of murder.

To my huge utter suprise--I actually enjoyed reading this book and this book is actually quite unputdownable! From start to finish, I actually was literally hooked into the story. The writing was spot on, with those twist and thrills that you wouldn't even expect. And as the story progresses, you actually wonder--is Cain the real murderer or is someone framing him? Or is Freddie that naive? Really love the thrill concept of this novel!

I do like the setting and the plot of the story. I also like the fact that Freddie is an Australian and is getting used to the American accent--something which I can also relate with Freddie during my own stay in the United States (I had a British accent when I spoke in English that time). I really also think this was a unique sort of story which I actually enjoyed very much and I like how one meeting could really bring the people together, creating lifelong friend (or enemy)

I also wonder--maybe it's just me the letters addressed to Hannah written by Leo at the end of each chapter--truly I am slightly confused but then towards the middle I kind of beginning to start those letters. Overall, I enjoyed this book so much that I couldn't even put the book down!

If you like a book based inside a library with a thriller setting, this book is one for you--worth four stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

The Woman in the Library was two stories in one. It was hard to figure out which is the story. In spite of this I was determined to read it and find out what was happening.. I was confused about Leo who wrote letters to Freddie who seemed to be the main character in this story. The story had so many twists and turns to the plot. The story starts with 4 people who meet in the Boston Library hear a scream. The story takes off from there to the exciting end. The surprise is the ending with the appearance of Leo,

Thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this ARC.

The way this book was written, with the other letters at the end of each chapter was so unique. I love love loved that format. While initially I was like: blah blah blah, how long are we going to do this - it absolutely TOOK MY BREATH AWAY when the plot twist in this storyline happened and then I was fully invested.
Now, the main storyline: I reflect on this read and wonder whether that storyline was kind of meh - because what kept me flipping was this other storyline. I felt like there was so much eating and drinking and just general hanging around that I'm not sure much happened until it all came together.
Now, the ending: I found this pretty weak and the motives pretty meh. I don't like that all of a sudden there was this HUGE villain of a character that you'd never seen before - it kind of came out of nowhere.
I do give this 4 stars because the format was something. And despite there being pandemic references, it is not so in-your-face that for those triggered it will upset the masses.

Thanks to Netgalley for giving this ARC

The Woman in the library revolves around strangers meeting. they sit on the same table being total strangers.

It is a very simple and medium pace story, more like a who-dun-it type a way.


Very simple I fear i extend my review I will definitely give spoilers and that is not allowed! If you need something

light and simple you can definitely pickup this book.

DNF. Maybe this was too meta for me, but I wasn't feeling the writing style or the change from story to reading an author's attempt at a novel.

I really liked the story framework of this book. There's an Australian author Hannah, who is writing a book about four strangers who meet one day in the Boston Public Library. They hear a woman screaming and this mystery sparks a bond of friendship between them. Hannah sends each chapter, as she completes it, to one of her beta readers, a guy called Leo, who stays in Boston and who does most of the legwork and other research for Hannah. At the end of every chapter Leo then sends his feedback to Hannah via email. The interesting part is out of the four strangers, two are authors themselves. So you see, its kind of a story within a story within a story. Makes your head spin a little thinking about it.

But the plot is not very complex to be honest and once you get the hang of this plot within a plot device you'd find it to be pretty quick read. I liked the concept of four strangers meeting and forming an unlikely friendship, unlikely because they come from different backgrounds. Though Cain and Freddie are both authors, the genres they write in are vastly different. Marigold is something of a genius and a psychology student while Whit, comes from an affluent family of lawyers but he himself is adamant to fail in law school which is his way of opposing his parents' decision.

Despite the interesting premise the story is slow moving and few chapters are really just the four people meeting and having lunch/dinner at various joints around Boston. Being an introvert, I felt Marigold was pushy and clearly doesn't understand boundaries, maybe that's the reason why Leo was cheering for her. Though Leo's analysis at the end of chapters, after some pages, gives you a clue to where that relationship of an author-reader is heading, I still didn't feel that it added much to the main story. The author interview in the end explains how Sulari came up with this brainwave , but it would've made things more exciting to get Hannah's perspective also, especially towards the end.

I really like literary mysteries like Magpie Murders, which utilize a plot within a plot trick so I had some high hopes for this book. It wasn't disappointing but not quite as good as I thought it would be.

The Woman in the Library

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill is an academia-adjacent thriller that examines the writing process in a very entertaining way. Winifred “Freddie” Kincaid, an Australian author like Ms. Gentill, uses an unexpected occurrence in the Boston Public Library as inspiration for her own manuscript. But it seems that she herself is a character in a book written by another Australian author, Hannah Tigone.

Hannah’s novel features Freddie, a novelist who is writing the story of a murder and the group of apparently unconnected strangers who become friends in its aftermath. Both of them are receiving advice from one Leo Johnson, another author, whose behavior becomes increasingly creepy. More characters are attacked, some peripheral ones die, and the labyrinthine developments make it harder and harder to separate reality from fiction.

This carefully constructed tale is an interesting take on the “unreliable narrator” trope and an interesting exercise in metafiction. The nesting doll plot certainly makes this book stand out in the crowded thriller field, its novel-within-a-novel conceit offering a new perspective on familiar themes in a way that is challenging, but not overwhelmingly so.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free advance copy of this entertaining book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for allowing me to read this ARC.

What a fun ride with Freddie, our author who becomes enveloped in a murder mystery while trying to find inspiration for her next book while sitting in the Boston Public Library! When she and the three strangers closest to her hear a woman scream, later to find out she was murdered, unusual friendships form between the individuals. Will some lead to romance? Is the murderer among them? Are they all connected to each other in a way as yet unknown?

I enjoyed that each character, though described physically only briefly, had a well developed personality and behavior pattern. The book made me think about my assumptions as to the physical traits of the characters when it directly pointed this out in the subplot story with Freddie’s pen pal Leo. There was just enough potential motive revealed per character for any one or none of the main foursome to have been the killer, which kept me guessing. I also loved the introduction of quite a few minor characters like Mrs. Weinbaum to add some humor to it all. The fact that the protagonist was Australian and in that subplot, receiving writing tips from an American in Boston as she shares her new novel with him, started out fun and turned creepy. It was unusual and creative to see how Freddie weaved that pen pal content into her novel, in good ways and bad.

I did have a sense of suspended disbelief when our heroine managed to elude the police on multiple occasions as did others. With as much video capture as there now is via mobile, street cams, door cams, and security it seemed a bit far fetched that regular people could just escape surveillance without trying too hard, but this is fiction and just as I didn’t care whether people were wearing masks or not to be true to contemporary life, I decided to let this piece of reality go as well. This was a good mystery all things considered and I finished the book satisfied that there weren’t any loose ends.

(4.5 stars)

a murder mystery that all begins in a library? IM IN

this novel is actually a story within a story, which was super interesting! 4 people, each with a different story, find themselves in the Boston Public Library when a woman screams and then turns up dead. they bond over the experience and become friends, but one of them is a murderer. EXCEPT that entire plot is actually a manuscript for Hannah’s latest book (this is where the second story comes in). every chapter that you read is part of Hannah’s manuscript and at the end of each chapter, a mysterious man named Leo critiques what she has written and offers up suggestions to make the book seem more realistically American.

there are MAJOR PLOT TWISTS in both stories, but i was left a little unsatisfied with the ending of Hannah and Leo’s story. i wish there was more at the very end detailing what happened in each of their lives. however, i thoroughly enjoyed the primary murder mystery and trying to figure out which member of the foursome was guilty. i could not figure it out and was absolutely shocked when it was revealed.

What a brilliantly clever book. I thought it was well written and although in parts did slow down I felt it somehow suited the story. The threads were great and I just loved it!

First I want to say thank you for the ebook ARC through netgalley!
Okay this book was a wild ride. Two different stories are told at the same time, one being a novel and the other being correspondence to the author or the novel. I don't think I've read any other books with quite the same structure and I totally loved it. It was such a fun murder mystery that had me constantly changing who my main suspect was.

4.5

This took me a minute to get into, but once I did I was hooked! This story was smart and twisty and I had a great time reading it.

There is a sort of meta element to this as there is a dual plot. One where an Australian writer is on fellowship in Boston and while she is trying to get over writer's block at the Boston Public Library she hears a scream that puts the room on lockdown. She makes friends with 3 people sitting at her table and later they find that a woman was murdered and for reasons are trying to figure out whodunnit. Meanwhile there is a secondary thread that has the aforementioned plot as the plot of a book that an Australian writer in Australia is writing and she is receiving advice/critiques from a friend in Boston that get progressively creepier.

I really liked the commentary pieces. I thought they added an extra layer of "what on earth is happening here" and liked how the author used those to get around the issue many contemporary authors are facing with setting their books in the times of Covid-19. I also liked how she used those bits to discuss how race matters to the plot. I also think the book brought up some interesting things related to incarceration and how formerly incarcerated people are treated.

I did have some issues with the pacing and there were some parts that I felt could have been a little more polished; however, I really enjoyed the book overall.

This is a high 4-star book that will release June 7. The Woman in the Library is a layered book-within-a-book with a twisty plot. I actually hit a part about half way through, when I actually said "Whoa." It was that surprising.

The main focus of the book centers on Freddie, an Australian living in Boston on a fellowship while she writes a novel. At the Boston Public Library, she meets Cane, Marigold and Witt and they are united when they hear a woman scream. The foursome forge a strong friendship after a woman's body is found in the library. But one of the friends is not what he or she seems and the others might be in danger.

That alone would make a great book, but is actually the plot written by Hannah, an Australian mystery writer. We are introduced to her through a series of emails sent by Leo, an American who we assume is her research assistant since she is sending him advance chapters of the book. Leo's emails also cover the wildfires in Australia and the lockdown caused by Covid. That added a fascinating touch to a memorable book.

I highly recommend this one.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

Twisted, chilling murder mystery with an enjoyable plot twist! A story within a story, a format which I never came across and it was refreshing to read it for the first time with this one. The beginning is a bit confusing as there is no info dump or any telling why there is suddenly a letter at the end of each chapter, but as the story continues I quickly picked up what's happening. It was very interesting regarding the fast-paced and the confusion in between deciding which character is the culprit of Caroline's murder.

The characters are well-written as each has their own favorable points as well as their background stories which makes them more grounded to reality and relatable. The plot is a bit slow at first but quickly develops as the mystery twined between the four newly-friends.

I must say I was shocked to finally discovered the hidden meaning behind the letter written on each end of the chapters, it gave me goosebumps knowing the truth behind it.

A cleverly written mystery with a dark twist!

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for letting me read an ARC of The Woman in the Library!

This story begins at the Boston Public Library where four strangers end up at the same table after a loud scream occurs. The four individuals would not have had contact with one another if this murder in the library had not occurred.

Each person begins to share information about themselves and soon we find out that one of these individuals committed the crime.

This book has a book within a book type format. It took me a few chapters to get used to this and adjust to what I was reading.

This story has a great cover and story line. You had me at books and murder!