Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“My last message... find her.”- Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, Matthew Sullivan

When a bookshop patron commits suicide, it’s his favorite store clerk who must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this fiendishly clever debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.

Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the 'BookFrogs'—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.
But when youngest BookFrog Joey Molina kills himself in the bookstore’s upper level, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions: Trinkets and books, the detritus of a lonely, uncared-for man. But when Lydia pages through his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago—and never completely left, as she discovers.

Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu and will keep you guessing until the very last page.​

This was another, slightly impulsive pick up. While I liked the plotline right from the start, what really sold me was the Amazon reviews describing it as being "surprisingly twisted". I like twisted, and have an extremely high twisted threshold when it comes to books. 

And I admit, I was a tad let down by the twisted factor. It wasn't really that bad, though why people would think it was pretty disturbing, given that the main plotline revolves around the hammer murder of an entire family, including a ten year old girl. There's also the graphic hanging of a twenty-something year old guy which the book opens with. 

I liked all the main characters- Lydia, Raj, and especially Joey, though I think my favorite character was Lyle, Joey's best friend. He cracked me up, and I could picture him perfectly, an intelligent yet eccentric rich old guy, whose mannerisms and way of speaking made me think, oddly enough, of Jim Williams of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame. Though a less murderous version, of course. I wished he was in the book more. 

I also found Joey, the man whose death was the catalyst for the plot. Without ever knowing him I found him endearing, and with the little snippets that Lydia gave us of him I was able to visualize him surprisingly well and actually felt empathy for him the more his story progressed. 

It was easy to get lost in this book. I wanted to know what happened, and I wanted to solve the mystery. Lydia, again, was an enjoyable main character, and the dry humor and intelligence of everyone in this book made it almost too easy to read.

Of course, there are some negatives. The main problem is, the more you think about this book, the more implausible it becomes. Like Joey finding Lydia because of her father being his guard when he was in prison, and then all the major spoilers that came along with it. I also felt like the reveal of Hammerman was a cop out, as well as the end of Lydia's relationship with David and perhaps the start of something with Raj. 

Still, I'm happy I stumbled upon Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. It was a sweet, quirky thriller with some darkness lurking underneath and as such was the perfect plane book for me (I read it on my connected flight from Charlotte to New Orleans. Yes, New Orleans in late July/August. I'm not denying my insanity). I'm glad I read it.

8 out of 10