Although I had a hard time getting into the groove at first, especially when listening to the audio version, the author rewarded my patience with a surprising ending. At one point, I suspected each one of them of being the murderer. The friendships between the characters are complicated and messy-part of what I enjoyed most about this book. It’s an off-beat, tense whodunit with epic twists and turns that kept me guessing until the very end.

Gentill’s novel combines two of my favorite things: a library and a mystery.

It’s a book within a book, a mystery within a mystery. Metafiction? What are you talking about, Amy? Basically, it is an innovative literary technique wherein an author writes about another author. The Woman in the Library is just the type of book I used to stay up all night reading, but now I am too old to manage it! Cleverly imagined, it is metafiction at its finest. Confused? I guess you’ll have to read it! So… Hannah is writing the story of Freddie Kincaid, who’s writing the story of the murder in the library. Each chapter of Freddie’s book includes a letter written to famous Australian author Hannah Tigone by a dedicated fan, Leo Johnson, a fellow writer who offers to be her beta reader. Freddie uses the incident as the start of her work-in-progress. When they find out a body has been found, they work together to solve the crime. Australian author Winifred “Freddie” Kincaid, writer, Cain, psych graduate student Marigold, and failing law student, Whit, all have a reason for being in the reading room that morning. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who are sitting at the same table, pass the time in conversation. Security guards take charge, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet until the tranquility is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream.

“I am a bricklayer without drawings, laying words in sentences, sentences into paragraphs, allowing my walls to twist and turn on whim…no framework…just bricks interlocked…no idea what I’m building or if it will stand…no symmetry, no plan, just the chaotic unplotted bustle of human life.” - Sulari Gentill, The Woman in the Library.

Woman in the library gentill