Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore Matthew J. Sullivan

by Matthew J. Sullivan
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore Published by Simon and Schuster on June 13, 2017
Genres: Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 336
Find the Author: Website, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram
Goodreads

When a bookshop patron dies by suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this "shocking, charming, thrilling" (Associated Press) and award-winning debut novel.

Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she leads a meticulously ordered existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day browsing the overwhelmed stacks.

But when a young BookFrog, Joey Molina, hangs himself in one of the upper rooms of the store, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Inside one of Joey’s pockets is a photograph of Lydia as a little girl. And when she flips through some of his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. The more she puzzles over them, the more they seem to contain a hidden message for her about his final days. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

With "oddball characters and [a] layered plot" (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review), Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is “a smart, twisty crime novel set in a world that booklovers will adore” (Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins).

Review:

I am participating in the In Case You Missed It Challenge, and for June, the year was 2017, I read a lot of what I saw on the Goodreads list that was published in 2017. I had only one book on my shelf, Dividing Eden, which was an older arc, so I started with that one, but it did not hold my interest, so I think I switched my choice twice more before I landed on Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. It was marked on my list as Want to Read, which I did not own, but the library happened to have the audiobook, so I scored. It did not disappoint in the genre that it was for, which is Mystery/Thriller, and it had a bookstore with a great name. Though the subject matter is quite dark and the ending is not happy, the fact that I did not figure out the who, what, and why was quite good and very bittersweet. I gave it 3.5 stars as I doubt I will read it again now that I know the ins and outs, but it was enjoyable and worked for the challenge.

Related Posts