The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego

The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank you to Bantam via NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Aria Stokes is finally feeling settled—she lives in a tiny New York apartment, works as a bookseller at a local shop, and has even taken a leap of faith in love by indulging her attraction to bookstore regular Jasper. And he seems to already know her so well.

As a Valentine’s Day surprise, Jasper gets the two of them tickets to an exclusive, after-dark tour of the Daedalus Library—the grandiose establishment famed for its immersive genre-based reading rooms and, more notoriously, its rumored hauntings. While Aria normally loves all things ghastly, this place holds more dark secrets than she’d prefer Jasper to know. Like that the last time she was here, she left a body behind.

But when the automatic-door entry malfunctions and Aria, Jasper, and the five other people in their tour group become trapped in the library, they are forced to venture through the storied rooms and hidden passageways of the Daedalus in search of escape . . . and Aria quite literally has nowhere to hide from the shadows of her past. Then the group learns there’s a murderer in their midst.

Now, as she tries to break out of the library’s intricate reading rooms, Aria has to decide who she can trust—and what secrets are best kept buried—if she wants to make it out alive.
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Wow.

This book was a WILD ride.

I read Pliego's debut novel last year, and I really enjoyed it, so when I was offered the opportunity to read this one ahead of publication, I jumped at the chance. I love a good thriller, and like many readers, I love books about books, so I assumed I would like this book. Well, I didn't just like this book. I LOVED this book.

Apparently, I am a big fan of locked room thrillers. I mentioned in my review of her first novel that I wanted to read it because it reminded me of the movies Clue and Murder by Death, both cult classics, and in some ways this book had that same kind of feel to it. You stick a whole bunch of people into a building (in this case a library) that they can't escape from with a killer on the loose, and you have a book that I want to read. However, not everyone can execute a locked room thriller as skillfully as Pliego has managed to do in this book, and I spent two long reading sessions today engrossed in the pages of The Library After Dark. I had to take a break in the middle in the same way that you sometimes have to turn off a scary movie because it is getting to be too much...it's not a bad thing; it just shows that the movie is That Good. However, after a break for lunch, I got right back to it and did not set my Kindle aside until the end. There were some excellent twists that I did not see coming, and some twists that I thought I saw coming never materialized, which is the mark of a great thriller, IMO. I can't wait to read Pliego's next book!

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