Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan - #BookReview

 

Lydia heard the distant flap of paper wings as the first book fell from its shelf. She glanced up from the register, head tilted, and imagined that a sparrow had flown through an open window again and was circling the store's airy upper floors, trying to find its way out.

A few seconds later another book fell. This time it thudded more than flapped, and she was sure it wasn't a bird.

It was just past midnight, the bookstore was closing, and the final customers were checking out. Lydia was alone at the register, scanning a stack of paperback parenting books being bought by a teenage girl with pitted cheeks and peeling lips...

***

What do you do when the life you’ve carefully built for yourself comes apart?

Lydia Smith lives a quiet life, spent in the company of her colleagues and customers at the bookstore where she works. But when Joey Molina, a young and mysterious regular, hangs himself in the bookstore and leaves Lydia secret messages hidden in the pages of his books, her world starts to unravel.

Why did Joey do it?

What did he know?

And what does it have to do with Lydia?

***

I borrowed this book from the library, and I absolutely loved it. It was twisty and turny and it kept me enthralled.

It has been very cleverly written. It begins with the suicide of a young man who leaves a puzzle behind him for the main character, Lydia, to solve. As it progresses, the book becomes more about Lydia's past and the secret that she is keeping hidden from those she knows and who she is close to.

Lydia was a fantastic main character. The reader is permitted to know her backstory which gives us an advantage over many of the secondary characters in the book. It is this that gives the book a multi-dimensional feel. What I initially thought the book was about turned out not to be the main theme of the story. The plot is compelling and intricate and the author has paced the book so that it is a page turner with a few surprises along the way.

Whilst the description of the murder is rather vivid, it did not feel gratuitous but was necessary for the reader to understand the childhood trauma which had led Lydia to become the woman that she did.

I enjoyed this book very much. It was an interesting and intriguing read and I hope the author will deliver more fiction of this quality.

ISBN:  978 1786090157

Publisher:  Windmill Books

Formats:  e-book, audio and paperback

No. of Pages:  336 (paperback)

Purchase Link - Bookshop.org*

About the Author:

Matthew Sullivan grew up in a family of eight children in suburban Denver, Colorado. He received his B.A. from the University of San Francisco, his M.F.A. from the University of Idaho. His writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has won the Florida Review Editor's Prize and the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize. In addition to working for years at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he has taught writing and literature at colleges in Boston, Idaho, and Poland, and currently teaches writing, literature, and film at Big Bend Community College in the high desert of Washington State. He is married to a librarian, Libby, and has two children and a scruffy dog named Ernie. He lives in Anacortes, WA, where he writes and teaches.

Purchase Link - Bookshop.org*

(author photo courtesy of Heather Young)

(author info courtesy of GoodReads)

(all opinions are my own)

*Disclosure: I only recommend books I would buy myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains an affiliate link from which I may earn a small commission.