In the leafy suburbs of Austin, Texas, a small branch library welcomes the public every day of the week. But the patrons who love the helpful, unobtrusive staff and leave rave reviews on Yelp don’t always realize that their librarians are human, too.
Hazel flees halfway across the world for what she hopes will be a new beginning. Jonathan, a six-foot-four former college football player, has never fit in anywhere else. Astrid tries to forget her heartbreak by immersing herself in work, but the man who ghosted her six months ago is back, promising trouble. And Sophie, who has the most to lose, maintains a careful and respectful distance from her coworkers, but soon that won't be enough anymore.
When two patrons turn up dead after the library’s inaugural murder mystery–themed game night, the librarians’ quiet routines come crashing down. Something sinister has stirred, something that threatens every single one of them. And the only way the librarians can save the library—and themselves—is to let go of their secrets, trust one another, and band together. All in a day’s work.
The Librarians by Sherry Thomas will be published September 30, 2025. Berkley Publishing Group provided an early galley for review.
As a librarian, how could I not appreciate the author's dedication for this book? Chapter one accurately reflects our place of work; Thomas nails everything down to the smallest details including the dialogue. She must have a librarian as part of her circle of friends or family. That said, the enormous volume of specifics gets very old very fast. It is as if everything the author learned about the minutiae of library interworkings got put into the script. It becomes too much.
The other thing that threw me is the quick-shift of point-of-view characters, often in the same chapter and even within the same scene. We start in the viewpoint of character A and shift right over to B. This coin-flip approach is not one that works well for me at all, especially as I am just getting to know a character. As a reader, I need to have those hooks to start to care for the characters (which was very difficult for me to do with this cast).
Finally, this could be a writing style thing (I have not read other books by Thomas), but I found there was a lot of stiff-language telling going on here. I very often found myself getting thrown off the reading experience. Ultimately, I ended up DNFing (did-not-finish) at around the 30% mark (100 pages in).
For the right audience, I am sure this story will work. I'm not the right audience.
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