A strange night library with an unknown owner, that stores book collections from famous authors who have passed away, and employs people via Twitter/social media.

We follow the characters and their previous employments and how they ended up working in the library... and also how they become closer to one another.

They have dinner at night, which are dishes inspired from books.

There's also a mystery we follow, which explores security issues within the library.

I'm hoping there will be a follow up after this book (I believe it's a triology)...

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster UK for this copy.

2.5 stars

I have made my love for Japanese fiction very clear, and with this one focussed on books, I thought it would be a winner, but sadly it wasn't.

It's not the smoothest translation I've ever read. Now, the extent of the Japanese I know is the numbers 1-5, which I learned when I was about 8 years old, and so this isn't a comment on how accurate the translation is, only that it's a bit clunky to read and difficult to lose yourself in.

It is very thin on plot, which I don't particularly mind as long as there are characters good enough to focus on, but again they were quite thin too.

It is a very easy book to read, not overly complicated or busy, and nothing much happens. It's quite flat, but a gentle read that will pass a few hours.

I'm used to Japanese fiction being quite whimsical and magical - which I know is a generalisation - but that's what I was expecting and it didn't come.

It was a pleasant read but not one I'd hurry to recommend. I did consider DNF-ing it on several occasions but because there wasn't anything obviously bad about it, I kept reading in the hope that something would happen, but it didn't.

The premise was interesting but it failed in its execution.

1.75⭐️

U can tell that the author truly loves books from the very beginning

The overall story is very boring there doesn’t seem to be any point to the story and feels very monotonous

I feel like the characters weren’t very fleshed out and we didn’t get to see much of their personalities they all seemed quite bland

Some of the writing was quite heavy handed instead of letting the reader think for themselves it kind of shoved what was meant In ur face

DNF. I've come to realise translated fiction is hit and miss for me and unfortunately the translation in this comes across as robotic, making it a jarring read.

As always, definitely a me problem.

Thank you for the ARC.

Otoha finds himself being invited to work in a library.
She alongside other employees experience weird events at nights in the library.
They have dinners and discover themselves in the process.
What I liked a lot was the heads up to the existing literature and the setting.
An enjoyable, cosy read.

I loved this book. It had such a cosy, relaxing atmosphere and was filled with interesting characters.
I've read a lot of books that fall into this genre of cosy/healing Japanese or Korean books, and I fall in love with them every time, and this book was no exception.
It had me hooked from page one right through to the end.
A wonderful read for when you want to slow down.
4.5/5

Time for yet another Japanese healing novel. As the genre is quite rigid and formulaic, whether you like this or not would be largely determined by whether you like reading healing novels. Dinner at the Night Library features quite a few genre staples - a quirky place/business premise, a cast of characters who make it their home, an episodic structure and a stress on (comfort) food as a conceptual core of the individual episodes. No cats this time, though. The protagonist, a recent English literature graduate, is tired of working in a chain bookshop near her parents' place in provincial Japan, and gets a job at a weird night library, a place where writers bequeath their personal book collections. In a series of chapters built around literary-inspired meals served in the library cafeteria, we get to know the other library employees and their personal woes.

Dinner offers just about enough variety to stand out among other healing novels. First of all, Otoha Higuchi, the protagonist, is not going through any sort of a major crisis. She had already decided not to take part in the Japanese corporate rat race, and made peace with earning less money but getting to work with books. She was just moderately bored in the uninspiring bookshop she used to work for. The episodic chapters are not structured around quirky visitors to the library who need the magic of books to resolve their archetypical issues (looking at you, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library). Instead, the core characters of the individual chapters are all employees of the library, and the novel examines the lives of people professionally connected to books, from professional civic librarians to second-hand bookshop owners, in granular detail, discussing various issues of librarianship, information management and economics of the book business. As someone who loves books and different aspects of the 'book world', I enjoyed the narrower scope and specificity of this approach. The discussions of actual books and writers provide a mix of real and fictional writers and their novels.

I enjoyed reading the book, but I was rarely in a hurry to pick it up. The overall narrative is practically non-existent, and the characters and their stories are not very engaging. There is nothing particularly distinctive about the prose, either.

Overall, an enjoyable subject matter and a somewhat refreshing take on a stale genre.

Our protagonist Otaha is a new employee at a quirky library - one that only collects the collections of deceased authors. The story is about the first few months of Otaha's experience working at the library - meeting her colleagues, encountering some quirky customers, and discovering the secret behind the owner.

I finished it quite quickly - there was something charming and disarming about the writing. There wasn't much drama, tension, or, frankly, anything remotely negative. The story flowed smoothly, and it was interesting to see where the author was taking it.

That being said, the experience overall was a bit hollow. While the initial concept is intriguing, the author did a poor job of developing the characters, making the mystery of the library's owner richer, or creating a coherent storyline that tied enough of the subplots together. As it stands, there were just too many diversions from the main storyline (the stories of some, but not all, of the other employees), the mystery became a proper mystery only in the last few "episodes" of the book (and didn't really make me care enough), and the characters remained rather banal. The supposed peak was supposed to come with the story of the library's manager and his relationship to the proprietor - but it just wasn't interesting or exciting. This is why, for me, it was a nice enough read, but it left me with literally nothing.

A pleasant enough waste of time. It's a miss, from my perspective.

I thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Otaha Higuchi has been desperate to work with books as a career all her life. So much so, that she endured a miserable period working at a chain book store before receiving a mysterious offer from the unknown owner of the Night Library, thanks to her bookish blog.

After accepting the offer largely on faith, Otaha arrives at a nondescript building tucked away in a Tokyo suburb to find a most unusual workplace, with a chef who provides delicious daily dinners, an eccentric cast of coworkers, and very odd working hours.

She also discovers a found family of sorts, a magical library that deals with the personal collections donated by authors, and what would have been her dream job, except that she had not dreamed of something so unusual!

A charming, gently told story that will appeal to booklovers everywhere, this gets 3.5 stars.