This was an enjoyable one. Somewhat of a mystery as a woman pieces together memories of a traumatic/violent event from her past. Would recommend if you want a mystery that’s not scary and not with an unreliable narrator.

Read this book so long ago and unfortunately didn’t post my review in time! Review to come, apologies for the delay

I requested this book because the premise appealed to my inner bookworm and I was not disappointed. This was   a intriguing and thrilling novel that left you constantly wanting to know more

A novel for booklovers everywhere, but not a cute and cosy one! Lydia Smith works happily and contentedly at the Bright Ideas bookstore until she finds one of her favourite customers has committed suicide inside the bookshop. Lydia inherits his worldly possessions and with them, a mystery that she needs to solve which forces her to confront memories of her own childhood that she would rather keep buried.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore had a couple of things going for it. First and most importantly a bookstore. These kind of books always find a way onto my reading list. The main character being a bookseller also helps. Add to that some mysterious messages that are left and a death to investigate. It sounded like nothing could prevent this from being an amusing read. 

And it was a nice read, just I had expected a little bit more from it. The past narrative from the main character made I couldn't focus on the ongoing investigation and I never really got into the story. While the writing was nice and made it an easy read, it wasn't anything special either. 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was a strange read for me. Let me start off by saying I loved it. I really loved it. Once I got into the actual story, I was engrossed. Horrified. Gutted. I felt all the emotions I should have been feeling, but emotions I was not expecting to feel.

Once I realised it was in fact a thriller (which took me a while as it was so deeply rooted in my brain that I was not reading one!), and had shaken off my preconceptions, this book came alive. It was brilliant. Some of the events in it were so shocking, my heart was pounding as I was reading them. My heart ached for Joey and Lydia. It ached for Lydia’s father.

It was a great thriller; one of the best I have read. I just wish the genre had been more obvious from the get go!

This was a strange read for me. Let me start off by saying I loved it. I really loved it. Once I got into the actual story, I was engrossed. Horrified. Gutted. I felt all the emotions I should have been feeling, but emotions I was not expecting to feel. 

Why was I not expecting to feel these things?

Well, the blue version of the book cover, which was the only one I had seen before reading it, planted the book, to me, in the contemporary fiction genre, or perhaps the cosy mystery bracket. Hence based on the cover and also the blurb I had read, I had no idea this was a thriller at all. I was expecting to read quirky book filled with adventure and puzzles. I was expecting it to be fairly light-hearted. It was anything but. 

Once I realised it was in fact a thriller (which took me a while as it was so deeply rooted in my brain that I was not reading one!), and had shaken off my preconceptions, this book came alive. It was brilliant. Some of the events in it were so shocking, my heart was pounding as I was reading them. My heart ached for Joey and Lydia. It ached for Lydia’s father.

It was a great thriller; one of the best I have read. I just wish the genre had been more obvious from the get go!

Such a bittersweet book and one that left me feeling a bit sad at the end. When young BookFrog (I don't recall the book explaining the meaning behind that name) Joey hangs himself at the bookstore he leaves behind a variety of clues that lead to the reasons behind his death. Lydia goes on a journey of discovery about both this and the mystery of a murder she witnessed as a young child. The two mysteries end up entwined with, as mentioned sad results. There are so many layers to this story and I loved unraveling it. It's a really beautiful mystery and I loved it.

I have been looking forward to starting this book for some time now. The premise caught my eye, the idea of it being a little bit of a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. A local down and out, Joey, who frequents the Bright Ideas Bookstore, he strikes up a friendship with Lydia, a bookseller with a broken history. Having survived an horrific murder at a sleepover as a child, Lydia struggles through life making the best of things that she can. One night Joey is found in the bookstore, having taken his own life, by Lydia. That alone was unexpected enough, but the discovery of a photo from Lydia’s childhood birthday with two young friends only adds to the confusion.

From this shocking revelation the story unravels into an avalanche of mysteries and secrets. As a massive fan of mystery novels I was really excited to see where this one would lead. Unfortunately that excitement was short lived. It took until well beyond the halfway mark for the mysteries to begin to make sense and the rest of the book followed suit.

While the book was unpredictable in terms of the scope and nature of the mysteries it really did not rescue the book for me. It felt like it ground along far too slowly, and with a lead in Lydia who as far too inward-looking, I really struggled to push through. I found it a real struggle as it limped from one revelation to the next. Much as I wanted to like it, it just moved too slowly. I am sure for many, the mysteries and the plot will be entertaining, but my predilection for fast-paced, high-octane mysteries this did not work for me.

Interesting book and definite one to read if you love books, reading about books and bookstores.   A treat for book-lovers.

I could not get through this book due to sensitive content. Maybe at a different time I would actually enjoy this book.

Quite a disturbing read as it covers the sensitive subject of suicide. Not massively enamoured with any of the characters and I think the book was just not the whimsical read I was expecting. Nevertheless, it is well written.

When they say don’t judge a book by its cover, I think also applies to don’t judge a book by its name. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore sounded like a charming read and I thought it would be along the lines of Katarina Bivald or Jenny Colgan.

It starts off in a bookshop, with a bibliophile doing what she does best, selling books.

So far, so good.

I –foolishly – was expecting it to continue as such. A soulmate, some true love and a lot of book recommendations thrown in, perhaps.

I was not expecting a suicide within the first chapter. Consider that a trigger warning for anyone thinking of reading this book!

The book in a nutshell is messed up lives, messed up relationships and a messed up puzzle that might reveal the answers to far more than it intended.

Lydia is a haunted woman. She has spent years hiding from her past after witnessing the gruesome murder of her best friend and her friend’s parents. She is the girl under the sink, ‘Little Lydia’ – everyone has heard of her while Lydia just wants to forget.

When confronted with her past in the form of a photograph from her tenth birthday, she learns the past can never be forgotten. Drawn back to the detective who took the case, Lydia must face some uncomfortable truths to figure out what happened that day.

It isn’t the only mystery, however. Why did the dead man – whom she had only recently met – have a photograph of her childhood? When a long-lost friend also arrives back in her life, Lydia soon realises this puzzle is far greater than one suicide note: her past and her present have caught up with one another with unexpected consequences.

Lydia was an okay character. I empathised with her, but didn’t detect any real development over the course of the book. She broke off a relationship with someone who loves her because she learns that he knew about her past and not told her – despite her keeping said past a secret. Her reaction felt shallow to me. Thankfully, it narrowly avoided the cliché of her getting together with the long-lost friend.

I didn’t completely engage with the secondary characters. Raj is a love-sick man trying to rekindle his feelings from childhood. Her father is eccentric and more destroyed by the past than Lydia herself. Her colleagues at the bookstore, including Lyle – a regular customer – felt as if they were there to be convenient sounding-boards for Lydia’s ideas, or to point her in the right direction, rather than developing themselves.

The pacing was fair though, and, if I’m honest, I didn’t predict how all of these events tied together. Some of it was just a little too much of a coincidence, but it made the story work and heightened the emotional outcome as more characters are affected than you think.

An interesting read with some tension and plot-twists. Not something I would go back to re-read though.

A very uncomfortable read for given my recent bereavement. The mystery left behind by Joey after his suicide is particularly difficult and disturbing.
It was well written and edited however my personally place when I read this book had only two words attached to the review in my book-
Too Much!

I’ll go back to this as it has potential and is actually a good story.

From the cover I thought this was going to be a bit of a magical type of book, how wrong I was and how so much better it was too. It's been on my TBR for a while and the thing about just seeing the title is that I had forgotten what the book was going to be about.



The words "Bookstore" had enticed me in yet again but I was not disappointed on what I found inside this book. A really unusual story that was so beautifully told and also so gripping that I read most of the book in one day. I just couldn't put it down.

When Lydia is left a pile of books by a customer at the Bookstore and finds they contain snippets cut from the pages in a random pattern a mystery ensues. I loved this part of the book the most, so fascinating to follow the clues. The mystery is intriguing, what follows begins a trail that leads Lydia to an answer she nor the reader ever expects.

At the heart of the book is a tragedy but the humour and easily readable style means that you don't really ever feel threatened by it, just drawn into the book completely. Great characters vividly drawn means that the book just never gets boring.

I'm giving this book five out of five stars. My thanks to netgalley for an ARC to review.

Loved the setting, the two for the price of one mystery novel with its book shop setting and books filled with clues and its darker mystery back story.

I have to admit, this book was not what I expected at all, but I enjoyed it a lot once I got into it properly. That did take a significant portion of the book, but there was a moment when it all just suddenly clicked and I didn't want to put the book down. Set primarily in the bookstore of the title, our lead character is Lydia, one of the booksellers. The Bright Ideas Bookstore is something of a haven for people who don't quite fit in, or are acing hard times, and one night, as she's closing up, Lydia comes across the body of one of these people after he's hanged himself. This prompts Lydia to find out what would lead Joey, her favourite 'bookfrog' to do such a thing, but it leads into her own past in ways she could never have imagined. Matthew Sullivan is brilliant at drip-feeding bits of information throughout the story, and although I did guess some of the conclusion slightly before the end, I was utterly gripped by the mysteries unfolding in front of me. I highly recommend it, just be aware that it's slow to get into, and parts of it are quite explicitly gory.

Provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

I really liked this book. It was well written and the characters really were fabulous. The build up of information and tension and drama was good. It kept me turning the pages. It made sense. That was until the twist at the end. It came as a surprise, yet it was all too pat. I wanted more from such a well written, well thought out book. It had the potential to be really mind blowing.. and yet...it missed the mark at the end for me.

Very readable but sometimes implausible! I liked the way the mystery unravelled at the end and I thought the whodunnit element was interesting and all was tied up well.

I found this book both engaging (in that the central mystery was intriguing) and touching. The characters were well drawn and likable in flawed, human ways, not least of all the young man whose suicide in the opening pages of the book drives the story.

It's quite a feat to make us feel for someone who we never directly interact with on the page, but despite knowing how things ended I found myself wishing for a happy ending even as the novel re-traced his path to his end at the beginning of the novel.

This one stayed with me for a while. Recommended.