Print or ebook – multiple POVs are easier when you can flip back
Sherry Thomas trades her Victorian detectives (which I feel like I want to go back and read her previous work!) for a suburban Austin branch library and gives us four staffers, each hiding a some level of secret. Hazel is quietly wealthy and on the run from her past, Jonathan is a gentle giant who finally feels at home, Astrid is nursing a fresh heartbreak, and Sophie keeps everyone at arm’s length because she has the most to lose. Their first murder-mystery game night ends with two real bodies.
Be warned, the story warms up slowly. I almost set it aside around the fifteen-percent mark, but once the investigation kicks in, it picks up. Because each chapter shifts to a different librarian, print or ebook is much easier to track than audio. I could flip back a page whenever I lost my place, which saved me from endless rewinds. The tone sits somewhere between classic cozy and moodier suspense: there is plenty of small-town charm (even though it’s Austin..) and bookish banter, but the secrets give the plot more depth than your average cozy mystery.
The ending tangles itself a little, though most threads pull together satsifactorily. I liked the emotional pay-off enough that any loose ends felt intentional rather than sloppy. If you enjoy cozy mysteries that lean a shade darker and do not mind keeping four narrators straight, add this one to your fall reading list.
Should You Read It?
Pick this up if you are:
A cozy-mystery lover who does not mind a grayer palette.
Someone who enjoys ensemble casts where every character hides a bombshell.
In the mood for found-family vibes wrapped around a murder investigation.
Maybe skip if you need thrill-a-minute pacing from page one or if multiple narrators give you whiplash. Otherwise, snag a copy, brew something warm, and settle in.
Sophie has carried the heaviest secret for fifteen years: the little girl everyone assumes is her daughter is not actually related to her. Back when Sophie and her girlfriend Joanna split, Joanna tried to salvage the relationship by getting pregnant. On the night the baby was born, Joanna phoned Sophie in a panic. Complications claimed Joanna’s life, leaving the newborn alone. Knowing Joanna’s Jamaican mother had disowned her for being gay, Sophie posed as the child’s aunt, signed the discharge papers, got new papers for her daughter, and has raised the girl ever since, terrified someone will uncover the lie.
Hazel’s flight from Singapore is tied to her late husband’s spectacular embezzlement. He supposedly died in a small-plane crash, but Hazel spent years convinced it was staged. Connor, her new boyfriend that she actually had met when she was in her early 20s and business partner of the first murder victim, obtains wreckage footage that finally proves the man is dead. What Hazel doesn’t know is where her husband hid the stolen millions in an encrypted bitcoin wallet, and several people at the game night want that code.
Astrid isn’t the chic Swede she pretends to be. She grew up in a tiny Iowa town and adopted the accent to reinvent herself. Dropping it now would expose her to colleagues who already view her as effortlessly worldly.
Jonathan, the gentle six-foot-four former linebacker, has always kept his sexuality private. When his high-school crush returns to town, the old feelings complicate both the investigation and Jonathan’s quiet life behind the circulation desk.
The first victim, Connor’s business partner, had traced the missing bitcoin back to Hazel’s husband. He started dating Astrid while hunting for the recovery key, despite threats warning him to stay away from the library staff. His return to the branch on game-night sealed his fate. The second victim was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time: she recognized Sophie from Joanna’s past and confronted her moments before the killers struck.
Everything converges during a staged after-hours showdown in the stacks. The couple who posed as harmless patrons reveal themselves as hired guns chasing Hazel’s fortune. Thanks to quick thinking, a lot of planning, and a little help from the police, the four librarians unmask the pair, recover the flash drive holding the bitcoin code, and walk away with their secrets mostly intact.
