“The Woman in the Library” is a story within a story about four college students in a library that hear a woman scream and begin a friendship. The novel is a bit confusing with the different narratives of Hannah and Leo breaking in to the library story, but ultimately it was a clever story.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.
3.5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

Four strangers are sitting at a table in a reading room in Boston Public Library when they hear a scream; while they wait for the all clear friendships are made. One of the strangers happens to be a murderer.

This is the novel that an Australian author, Hannah is sending to Leo, who's in Boston and able to supply her with Bostonian feedback. This relationship is its own intriguing story in time.

A really unique structure and a fun, gripping read, never knew what was going to happen next.

The Woman in the Library is a multi-layered story by Sulari Gentill. This book is like a story in a story, in a story. Ms Gentill did an excellent job of keeping me guessing "who did it". This is a good story that takes place over a short period of time. I want to thank NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an early copy to review.

Sulari Gentill's The Woman in the Library offers an interesting read. It's set up as a book within a book. An Australian writer is writing a mystery novel set in Boston with events starting in the Boston Public Library—and about 3/4 of what we read is the text of this novel. She's sending the manuscript, one chapter at a time, to a fan/acquaintance living in Boston, and the remaining 1/4 of the book is his responses to her chapters. Some readers have found this structure confusing, but I felt it became clear very quickly, especially since the layout uses a different typeface for each of the two voices.

A group of four strangers—an Australian writer on a fellowship, a U.S. writer struggling with a follow-up to a successful first novel, a psych grad student, and a reluctant law student who hopes to flunk out in order to avoid joining the family law firm—meet by chance in the Boston Public Library on the day a murder occurs there. They quickly become fast friends, and just as quickly start to realize that one of them must be the killer. The plot takes off from there with more deaths, disappearing/stolen phones, and unexpected discoveries about the pasts the members of this group.

The first half of the novel was engaging enough to keep me reading, but I didn't really get caught up in things until the 53% mark (I was reading an electronic version). That's when it becomes increasingly clear that there's something very, very wrong with the fan/acquaintance who is commenting on the novel chapters. His advice becomes increasingly strident, and the reader begins to realize that there may be a second mystery here in addition to the one within the novel-in-progress.

If you enjoy seeing the original, inventive ways novelists can play with the mystery genre, you'll love this book. If you want something deeper, with more complex characterizing (say, Benjamin Black or Iain Pears) the central concept may not be enough to keep you going. Either way, the Woman in the Library is an excellent novel to turn to when you need a mystery that is genuinely original and entertaining.

I received a free electronic ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

This book delivered some real surprises, and worked for me on several levels. I love an epistolary novel, so the letters were interesting from the start. But the author does something really smart and innovative with them (no more details because of spoilers) that I was a huge fan of. I'm a sucker for unique plot structure, books-within-books, etc., and this story uses those tools in a fresh way. Bravo! Usually when I'm reading I want to be so immersed that I feel like I'm the main character, experiencing everything alongside them. I didn't get that feeling here, but it worked because of the book's structure. I was very aware that I was reading a book and didn't get lost in the story, but oddly, that's kind of the point! Very smart storytelling.

Read if you like: novels in letters, stories about writers and how they work, books within books, plot twists, unconventional novel structure, books about new friendships.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC. This was a fun read that I really enjoyed. I liked the author's writing style. There were a lot of twits and turns that kept me wanting to read the next chapter. The way the author mentioned the pandemic and race relations without actually including them in the storyline was really creative. I would have put the book down if they were focal points within the story. Kudos to Freddie for trusting herself and writing her own story. I will be recommending this book to mystery-lovers and adding a copy to my bookshelf. 5/5 Stars!

Australian crime author Sulari Gentill is probably best known for her historical Roland Sinclair series. But as her 2018 Ned Kelly Award winning novel Crossing the Lines (also known as When She Wrote Him) showed, she is not above a little meta-textual playing around. In Crossing the Lines, a woman writes a crime novel in which the main character is writing a novel about her. Suffice to say there is a blurring of what is the “reality” of the novel and what is the text. Gentill’s latest novel The Woman in the Library is also a stand alone mystery that very deliberately plays with the form.
The Woman in the Library starts with a letter. Leo, an American, is writing to a well known writer called Hannah, he is a fan of her work and offers to help with her current project. We then get Chapter 1 of what turns out to be that project – a book about an Australian writer in Boston, Winnifred ‘Freddie’ Kincaid, who on hearing a scream in the Boston Public Library, becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. When she hears the scream, Freddie is sitting with three strangers and very quickly, bonded by the experience the four become friends. Although, as Freddie foreshadows at the end of that first chapter one of the three could be a murderer. When that first chapter ends there is another letter from Leo, who is provides comments on use of American terms and suggestions. Leo’s letters will bookend most chapters, leading readers into a totally different story around the edges of the main narrative.
The primary story in The Woman in the Library is a well handled old-fashioned mystery, complete with red herrings, slowly revealed dark pasts and seemingly incompetent police. But this central story never really gets a chance to get going. The letters from Leo at the end of each chapter keep taking readers out of the story, pointing out dialectical errors and making predictions about the plot, almost forcing readers to drop the suspension of disbelief that would help them stick with and navigate a story in which a crime writer takes it on herself to solve a crime. Conversely, Leo’s story is too fragmented and passively delivered to achieve a high enough level of suspense to work effectively. So that rather than reinforcing and playing on each other, as the two strands did in Crossing the Lines, the two stories in The Woman in the Library remain completely separate and so end up working against each other.
Much like Crossing the Lines, Gentill uses her text to consider issues related to writing, and crime writing in particular. Through Freddie and the fictional Leo (in Hannah’s book) we get a primer to different kinds of crime fiction writing styles – the get on the bus and see where it goes freewheeling style and the meticulously plotted style. But there is also plenty of exploration, courtesy Leo, of issues of modern crime writing including how to treat the current pandemic, the role of race and the way it is handled in crime fiction, the pursuit of veracity in the imagining or description of grisly scenes, and of course the struggle to get noticed and published.
So there is plenty for crime readers to enjoy and think about in The Woman in the Library. But it is overall a more frustrating than engaging experience.

This book was amazing! I enjoyed every single chapter, and it kept me hooked the entire time, which I loved!

I had a blast reading this.

I don't want to give too much away, but this is really a story within a story. The fictional real world takes place between the chapters, and shows us that the rest of the story is actually a manuscript that a mystery writer is working on and sharing with a devoted fan. The correspondences in the fictional real world slowly reveal their own story, and something of a mystery, while we get to experience the gripping story of the manuscript. And just to trip us out a bit further, the main character of the manuscript is also a writer, and is inspired by the events in the manuscript to work on her own story, which we get to see glimpses into that process.

It's such a fun and rare format, and Sulari Gentill managed to carry it out flawlessly. Both stories had me hooked from beginning to end, and the characters within the manuscript were all so captivating. Their relationships and chemistry were all very believable, and I was left guessing until the end.

It was a little difficult for me to get into this book, then about halfway through, it really grabbed my attention. I can’t say I was really surprised by the ending, I had started putting the pieces together. However, I really love a book structure that is unique. And this is definitely unique! I enjoyed the letters interspersed with the fictional author’s work. Sometimes it’s confusing to separate Hannah, the author writing the novel within The Woman in the Library (whom we never really meet), from the main character in said novel, Freddie. Freddie is written in first person so sometimes I had to remind myself that Freddie was not Hannah.

I think I would have liked to have met Hannah and heard her thoughts on Leo, the crazed fan pen pal. But, still, I really was drawn in by the unique format. And, in the end, I found this to be a clever read, even if all parts of the story didn’t grab me.

This book is the first I’ve read that has had to deal with Covid. And the author takes an interesting take on it, raising the question of how and whether to include it by way of her letter writing fan Leo. The authors note at the end brings up interesting points about how authors and novels will have to dance around the subject of Covid in future writing.

My thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for an advanced (digital) reader copy, in exchange for my honest review.

How can I not love a book that starts out in the Reading Room of the Boston Public Library? I'm pretty sure it's impossible. I love the BPL with all my heart. Also, so many fun Boston references, both real and fictional. They go to the Friendly Toast! And the Brattle! But also cool fictional places that I wish existed like Around the Hole, a donut shop near Copley.

This book had so many layers of story telling and writers that made for a wild ride - most of the novel is written by Hannah, an author sending chapters from her newest book to an online friend, Leo, who responds to them by email. As the chapters progress, you see how Hannah uses Leo's advice to adapt (or not) her story as well as a better picture of their relationship. And in Hannah's story, there are two authors who are also writing, one of whom is writing a fictionalized story about the people she met that fateful day at the BPL when they all were present for a murder. There's also another writer who wasn't at the BPL that day, but his name is also Leo. And on and on it goes. I read this book with a smile on my face.

This book kicked off in a really compelling way, but sadly, that's all it really had going for it. The plots crawled along at barely a smolder that never managed to build themselves into a burn, slow or otherwise. You may have noticed that I said "plots". It's not a typo; this story has a dual plot situation going on that, while interesting in theory, was just not executed very well, in my opinion.

There was a line in this story, around the point when I was starting to wonder if <i>anything</i> was going to happen in this book, that got me thinking I might have been duped by picking it up.

"We dress our stories up with murders, and discussions about morality and society, but really we just care about relationships."

It kind of speaks for itself. Basically, this book promises you a murder and mystery, but doesn't really deliver on either of those things in a satisfying way because it's more focused on the developing romance between characters.

As someone who doesn't enjoy reading romance, I didn't like being tricked into reading a romance disguised as a murder mystery. I would have been able to tolerate it if it wasn't at the expense of the rest of the plot, but it definitely was. The mystery didn't really feel fleshed out, and the solution was easy to guess, even early on in the book.
To make matters worse, for a book about relationships, the characters were okay at best. They all felt very cookie-cutter to me, and I found it hard to connect with any of them.

If you're looking for a romance novel with some peripheral mystery/murder, this might be for you. However, if you're looking for a who-dun-it that'll leave you guessing until the end, I don't think you'll find this book very satisfying.

I would like to thank Net Galley and Poisoned Pen press for the chance to read this book as an ARC. The framework for the plot is a bit twisty, but worth taking the time to read and sort out. Hannah is a writer in Australia. She is writing a book about 4 people( 2 men and 2 women), strangers, who are in the Reading Room of the Boston Public Library when there is a scream. The 4 people begin to talk and bond . One of the women, Winifred( Freddie), is a writer from Australia. The foursome find out that a woman was killed in the library.One of the men knows the woman. The other man is also a writer and the 4th is a girl named Marigold, who is a student in Psychology. The 4 become friends quickly , and become interested in each other and in the murder. Hannah, the Australian author, is also receiving emails, which start each chapter, from a man named Leo who is in the US. Leo is also a writer( although unpublished at this point) and is a fan. He initially is giving Hannah tips on American Slang, Boston Landmarks, etc. Hannah is sending him chapters ( it is unclear why or how this friendship started)and he is providing critiques and suggestions. So it is a book, about a woman named Hannah who is a writing a book. Hannah is getting regular emails from a man in Boston named Leo. Hannah's book is about an author named Freddie, who gets involved in a murder mystery, is writing a book about it and has a friend named Leo. Like i said, twisty. It is very interesting and the characters are fascinating. No spoilers, but no one is really what they seem.It seemed to wrap up a bit too quickly, there were a lot of threads that were all of a sudden resolved. I am also not sure about the Leo character, either the email version or the one who befriends Freddie , or the one in Freddie's story. There was a lot to think about and process. I think this is a book I will be rethinking for sometime to come. And that's a good thing.

I wrote a long review but then NetGalley glitched so I'll be more brief this time. Overall I'd give it a 3.5, with extra points for the unique structure. The dialogue and overly descriptive sections really took me out of the story and made it hard to get invested in any of the characters. It's a really creative premise and I enjoyed that, but could be greatly improved with less descriptions and more realistic dialogue.

This book was very enjoyable. I loved how it was done through a chapter of a book and the email with the reader's thoughts on that chapter. Loved the interesting twists.

Handsome Man; Freud Girl; and Heroic Chin: these are the names that Writer—In—A--Slump gives to the people sitting at her reading table at the Boston Public Library (BPL). Writer--In—A--Slump is spending most of her time sneaking peaks at Handsome man, and admiring the catenary arch which forms the ceiling. Soon, there is a scream, and the foursome begin to form a friendship.

Handsome man is Cain McCleod, a published writer. Freud Girl is Marigold Anastas, a Harvard student studying psychology. Heroic Chin is Whitt Metters, an easy-going law student doing everything he can think of to flunk. Writer—In—A—Stump is Winifred (Freddie) Kincaid, a writer who has secured a scholarship so she can work on her book. From this group she is inspired to write a story that parallels the events the four experience.

What we have is a piece of metafiction: “a novel that imitates a novel rather than the real world” (John Barth). The novel The Woman in the Library is a work of fiction about a writer writing a work of fiction. Freddie’s opus comprises the events and people involved in the mystery concerning the Woman—Who--Screamed. We experience the events concurrent with her as she tells us about writing the book. Got it? I love it!

This is a frame story: before every chapter there is a companion story with a different narrator. These are in the form of emails sent to Freddie by a man named Leo. These missives concern advice he is giving concerning the chapters she sends him to critique. He also suggests that they should meet. Who is Leo? What is his story? How do they know each other?

I absolutely enjoy books about books. Sulari Gentill is a fantastic writer. She has imbued the characters with personalities and humor which makes for great dialogue. The mystery of the Woman—Who—Screamed works well as the reason for why they meet, and why they continue to interact. Along the way, we have romance, deception, speculation, suspense, and, care of Freud Girl/Marigold, psychological analysis.

I can enthusiastically recommend this book.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for the opportunity to read and review this novel.

The Woman in the Library alternates between a literary murder mystery and letters to the author that provide feedback on the mystery itself. In fact, they become part of the mystery.

The story begins when 4 people start a friendship at the Boston Public Library after they hear the scream of a woman who is later found murdered.

The tension that builds over the course of the book propelled me along quite quickly and the whole thing kept me guessing until the satisfying end.

If you love a good mystery and have a fondness for writers you will love this novel.

5⭐
This book was such a surprise. I was hooked from the first chapter until the last page. This is my first read from this author, but will not be my last.
Describing this book is somewhat of a challenge, but here it goes. Hannah is a famous author who is writing a mystery novel about an author writing a novel. We also get emails from Leo, an avid fan of Hannah's, in response to chapters she is sending him. They get weirder and weirder as we go. The book within the book was so engaging. In Hannah's novel we follow Winifred, or Freddie. She is an Australian author living in the US on fellowship. She goes to the Boston Public Library where she meets Whit, Cain, and Marigold. They all here a woman scream, and strike up a friendship from there. They layer find out a woman was murdered in the library, and the mystery goes from there.
This story was so engaging, and the writing is so beautiful. I cannot wait for a physical copy when it releases in June.
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

"The Woman in the Library" by Sulari Gentill was much more than a simple mystery. It was actually a book, containing a book that contained a mystery. This perspective added an interesting other layer to a great mystery. The mystery was also heightened by the slow release of people's back stories and the unexpected twist and turns along the way.

Anyone who enjoys a great mystery, will definitely enjoy all the uniqueness contained in "The Woman in the Library.

Interesting book. The stories are well written and keep your attention. At first didn’t care for the emails from Leo, but they did help to keep you aware of the “story'" and the "real world". Then they definitely got creepy. Who done it kept changing, and the reasons for the original murder over the top. I will recommend this book to others as it is a mystery within a mystery.