I was really intrigued by the premise of That Night in the Library. I loved a locked room mystery, and what could be more creepy than a dark library after hours?

I struggled at first to follow the different characters and their stories, which made it a bit harder to buy into the story. Some of the more graphic deaths felt a bit more out of place and gratuitous than I expected.

Having said that I think the author did a great job of establishing the creepy library setting. The characters felt self indulgent and pretentious, making it really hard to know who you could trust, and elevating the suspense. The discomfort I felt reading the story reminded me of reading Lord of the Flies for the first time. The second half was fast paced, with lots of tension, though I would have loved to see what happened after the end.

I was lucky to enjoy this as an audiobook and ebook. The narrator did a wonderful job in building tension and pacing within the story. The cool characterisations made the outcome of the story all the more chilling.

Thank you Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for a copy of this book. Opinions expressed are my own.

I'm a big fan of locked room mysteries and campus novels, so I thought That Night in the Library would be perfect. Seven students lock themselves in the library basement overnight to reenact a ritual meant to banish fear, but then, one by one, they start dying.

The setting is interesting and the idea is good, but the pacing and characters leave something to be desired. There are bursts of frenetic activity that punctuate the otherwise monotonous action; the characters point fingers, scramble around in the dark for a while, and find one of the fellows dead. The characters are also a bit flat, relying on one or two personality traits, which means their motives are strange even when explained. Why are they at this fear-banishing ritual in the first place? The explanations are pretty weak.

There is a lot of potential here, particularly if the pacing was a bit more even. I would certainly read Eva Jurczyk's future work.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

It's the night before your college graduation and you are invited to spend a night in the basement of the library to perform a ritual. All you have to do is fast for the entire day. Sounds like a cool adventure...until someone gets killed! Keep an eye out for this book - it will be available from your favorite bookseller on June 11. Thanks to NetGalley and Eva Jurczyk for giving me a copy to review!

I really wanted to love this book, but unfortunately, it just wasn't for me. I felt like I couldn't connect with the characters and sometimes I was just plain confused with what was going on. There were too many twists and turns for my personal liking.

I really wanted to like this more than I did! 😩 The story had a great premise. At the points where all the action was taking place, it was really good! ❤️

But interspersed were backstories of the characters that I feel should have been given more in the beginning. This resulted in action, slowness, action, slowness…made the story drag a bit. 😵‍💫 There were also a fair amount of pages dedicated to the story of William E Woodend, who donated his money for the library, and I’m not sure it really added much to the story except to point out how much of a jerk he was. 👀

The twist at the end was good, but I was left scratching my head at the last chapter. 🤔 Not saying anything so I don’t spoil the book for anyone! 🤐

Not a bad book, it’s just not one of my favorites! 💔 It may be a favorite to someone else though so if you’re curious about it, check it out! 🤓

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to read the eARC in exchange for my honest review! ❤️

Anything described as a locked room mystery will get my attention.

A bunch of pretentious college students have a party in the library basement: drugs, sex, ritualistic sacrifices you know… who will make it out and who is doing the killing?

I could not get into this at all. I wanted to but the characters were insufferable and all the same and it just dragged until the end.

Thanks to netgalley and Macmillan audio for an eARC.

Put on my DNF list. I had high hopes for this book but the character development did not develop quick enough for me to stay interested. Got about halfway through and found myself no longer anticipating what happens in the end.

I really tried to like this. To Jurczyk’s credit, I read it in less than a day, and I was excited to see what happened next. However, the suspension of disbelief became too much for me, and this devolved into a pretentious college-kid Lord of the Flies. While there are a lot of nuances to paranoia and the influence of hunger and substances on the brain, the characters’ choices seemed bizarre, and even the more realistic ones seemed to lose all their wits for no reason. The twist was interesting, but I’m not sure it was an adequate payoff for the rest of the events.

This disappointing book wants to be both a locked room mystery novel and a horror novel and ends up being not a very good example of either. The premise: seven (obnoxious) college students gather on the eve of graduation to reenact a Greek ritual in the locked basement of the library, and one of them ends up dead, is great. Very promising. However, the descent into cartoon violence and Lord of the Flies style mayhem is very poorly motivated, and none of the decisions these (insufferable) characters tracked as believable to me.

The further I got into the book the more annoyed I got with it. As I had signed up to read a locked room mystery but instead I was stuck reading the literary version of a Saw movie. And maybe that should be laid at the foot of the marketing department, but it made for a very unpleasant reading experience for this reader.There’s almost no part of the implicit murder mystery bargain that this book actually fulfilled, at least for this reader. The one exception being the clever murder reveal at the end, which it still managed to botch. John Dickson Carr would be ashamed of this novel, and that concept deserved a better writer.

It would be one thing if I could say that this was a good example of a slasher novel, but the prose was uninspired (but not unreadable), the plotting and pacing is average at best, and I think both thriller and mystery fans are going to be unimpressed. Unfortunately this is the author’s second book so I can’t even chalk it up to the book being a first effort. If you really want to know what would happen if Quentin Tarantino directed Hercule Poirot, you can give this a try--otherwise your time is better spent elsewhere.

I received an advance review copy in exchange for this honest review.

Thank you NetGally and the Publisher for the eARC

The Night in the Library is a dark academia locked room mystery - think Ninth House, meets any locked room mystery, really. The concept is very cool and the writing is consistent with the genre. It can be a little pretentious and grandiose, but these characters are "intellectuals" and everything that implies. It works.

I would recommend to this to seasoned readers and lovers of dark academia though. I'm not sure it'd be universally well received. It requires the reader to know the genre, know that these are characters that are too self-absorbed to realize they're outcasts, that libraries aren't places of learning but of secrets, and that being unlikable when you're a 22 year old, self-described genius at a rural liberal arts college is not a red flag.

The premise is simple, seven students sneak/break into the university’s rare books library after closing hours on the eve of graduation. Their intention is to perform a Greek ritual, however things go wrong when one of them mysteriously dies and the rest are left to fend for themselves against an unknown murderer (while being trapped inside with no way out). They don’t really know each other, they have been experimenting with drugs, it’s all bad no matter how you look at it. I love a “locked door thriller” and I was looking forward to reading this book. I found the pace to be really uneven, some chapters slow, others with almost too much information (it was hard to keep it sorted). There wasn’t a lot of character build up, so I really didn’t have “feelings” about the characters specifically. Although there were twists, they didn’t seem to be connected all that well. The ritual was pretty much non-existent, and that part I was excited to see how it went. Overall the premise was good, the blurb brought me in, but the story was not executed properly for me.

I will honestly admit I struggled with this.

The main problem was that I just could not connect with the characters - I am not sure if that's the way they are written or if it's me, but yeah. Maybe it is the way it was written, the chapters are really short and we skip around and although I had no problem following the story or anything, it just didn't sit well with me. I did love the setting, an old library behind the closed doors, all the books, rare books!! and even the ritual part was intriguing, though it didn't really play a central part as I thought it would.

All in all, the synopsis and the premise interested me so much! But the execution... I think it could have been done better.

7 students are locked into the basement of the library for a night. Little to most know but a killer is among them.

I think I tried to pick this up 3 or 4 times and could never get past Chapter 10? I'm not sure what's going on but it definitely was not capitating.

Hopefully one of these days I can pick it back up and really try, but yeah this held nothing for me

The Night in the Library
⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a unique locked room suspense. 7 young adults come together to spend the night locked in the basement of a rare book library to reenact a ritual. What should have been a light hearted bonding experience turns into a bloody paranoid drug-fueled who-dun-it.

Most of the book is shown through Faye’s perspective. I was surprised to see the contents showed only 25 chapters, but several chapters have multiple parts. I was confused on what constituted a new chapter and what only a sub chapter. I thought the characters were well fleshed out. While I enjoyed the final reveal and sudden ending I also alternatively wish I knew more about what happened as a consequence of the night. Throughout the book I cringed at how much chaos and destruction was taking place in such a short time period, but it really did make sense when you take in all the contributing factors: fasting, tripping on acid, the paranoia, and the fact that most of the characters were basically strangers to each other which made it easy to distrust and turn on each other.

Thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this ARC. Pub Date Jun 11 2024.

Poisoned Pen Press provided an early galley for review.

This was another author whom I heard speak about their upcoming novel back in April 2024 at the PLA annual convention. As a librarian, I found the title and the premise to be very intriguing. I definitely was eager to check it out.

I had a hard time getting through this one, but I made myself finish it nonetheless. My problem was with the characters; I found them all absolutely self-absorbed thus unlikeable. I am not sure if they came across this way because of their ages or as commentary on the generation from which they come, but I just could not connect to them. Even though we get several chapters up front to get introduced to them as well as the point-of-view shifting between each of them throughout the story, it simply did not help me sympathize with any of them.

What added to it was how those personalities actually worsened after they took drugs. Their paranoia rose and their ability to reason dropped extremely, no doubt a response to the tension of this situation. Still, because I cared for none of them, I was not at all invested on who lived and who died.

The ending does tie to elements laid out before (as a mystery should), but that was only a small compensation.

I am confident this book will find an audience for whom it resonates. Maybe a younger audience than this particular Gen-X reviewer.

THAT NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY, Eva Jurczyk

A locked room murder mystery: seven people gather in the basement of the rare books library to recreate an ancient Greek ritual. A few minutes into their celebration the lights go out, and one of them drop s dead. Now high on acid as part of the ritual, overtaken by fear, suspicion and paranoia, the group must figure out how to survive the night because at least one of them is a murderer.

The premise of the story was interesting, but the characters seemed loosely connected. There are definitely some intense and thrilling moments, ending with an interesting twist and several lingering questions.

My thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for a free advanced copy of this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Characters:3/5
There are Seven main characters all with their own points of view, and it is somewhat overwhelming. The voices were not quite distinct enough for me to remember whose POV I was in. They also made some questionable choices throughout and I did not find myself rooting for any of them.


Story/Plot:3/5
Seven students all gather in the basement of the library to perform a Eleusinian Ritual, with the help of drugs and so naturally things start to go wrong. The pacing was fairly slow, and took quite a while to set things up. The ending was enjoyable though!


Writing:3/5
The writing was not difficult, or too flowery, but I did find myself having a hard time getting into the story despite this. I felt like the "library at night" atmosphere was there, but not enough for me to sink in and loose myself.

Final Verdict:3/5


Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Press Pen for the e-ARC for an honest review!

I really enjoyed this book. I truly think I’m in my thriller reader mood. So I enjoyed this book very much. Add to that, the fact that it is set in a library basement and murders are involved … I found the perfect recipe for a book that would thrill and engage me from the beginning until the very end!! And it was exactly like that. This idea to put a bunch of people together with murders involved is very Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None inspired, which I deeply loved. Throughout the book, we find out more about the characters and how much they are connected to one another through a past that links them all to the library. Plus, they are all extremely smart and cultured people so … watching them navigating this strange and peculiar situation where everyone doubts everyone was interesting. A strange plot but definitely unique, I found myself interested in knowing how the author would have developed the story. Each character had to their own role to play and they did it brilliantly. I was surprised by the end, to be honest. Pleasantly so. And I have to admit that that last line specifically made me chuckle !!! I’m glad I had a chance to read it!

I could not get into this book for the life of me. The concept of the book seemed interesting but when i start reading it, i could not get through the first three chapters so i had to skimming most of the book after that. The idea was there but the execution was lacking. Maybe it will be better in audiobook form and i hope it will release in that format as well to give this book another chance.