By Melissa AmsterAlexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books.
The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy—Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself? (Synopsis courtesy of Amazon.)
I know Kate Quinn best for her historical fiction novels. So I didn't know what to expect from a fantasy novel, but I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed this story and was absorbed every time I picked it up.
While there are some similarities to
The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer (releasing in April), it is also unique in many ways. Both novels have a female character in her late twenties who doesn't have parents, the ability to jump into books and be part of the story, a scene involving
The Great Gatsby, and a mystery at the center,
but everything else is different. While the characters in The Book Witch can control parts of the books they jump into, the characters in
The Astral Library are inside books for a different reason altogether and are considered non-playing characters.
Alix was a sympathetic character and I was stressed out for her both in the real world and in the Astral Library. There was a lot at stake for her in both places. I really liked Beau a lot too and his dress designs sounded amazing. I wish there were pictures in the book so we could see his dresses!
For this novel, you need to suspend disbelief, but isn't that true for any fantasy? There were some elements of danger, which kept me turning the pages in hopes that Alix and the Librarian would be okay. I also didn't know what was going to happen from one moment to the next, so it never felt predictable. I really liked the purpose of this library and what it did for people who needed it.
Anyone who loves books and libraries is in for a treat with this novel! And if Kate ever wants to write a sequel for it, I'm totally going to read that too.
Movie casting suggestions:
(Trigger warnings at the bottom of this post.)
Thanks to William Morrow for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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TW: Parental abandonment. Some violence. Poverty. Mentions of domestic abuse (from spouse, parents, siblings).
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