Book Review: Midnight At The Bright Ideas Bookstore

Author: Matthew Sullivan
Book Title: Midnight At The Bright Ideas Book Store
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Date Published: June 13, 2017
Paperback: Scribner
Pages: 336

Synopsis: 
Lydia works as a clerk at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. It is a place where the "lost and eccentric" hang out. Lydia calls them "BookFrogs."

In the first pages of the book, Joey Molina, one of the BookFrogs, hanged himself in the store's upper floor and Lydia was the one to discover him.

He had a small photo in his pocket. It was of Lydia as a little girl with two childhood friends. 

Why on earth did Joey have this childhood photo of her? She'd never met him before he started coming to the bookstore.

Lydia then finds that she is bequeathed Joey's meager worldly possessions. 

When she flips through the pages of the books he owned, she finds that they are defaced in odd and disturbing ways. And they seem to contain a hidden message.  

Lydia was always Joey's favorite bookseller. But the photo in his pocket suggests that she somehow figures into his life in some other way.

Lydia follows the odd clues Joey left behind and comes face to face with her own violent childhood. 

To that long ago night when she was at a sleep over at her friend's house and tragedy occurred.

The night Lydia scurried across the floor and hid underneath a kitchen sink while an unknown person walked through the house and killed her friend and her parents.

Why was she the only person left alive?

***

This book grabbed me from the very first page. It was hard to put it down. 

This writer managed to weave two stories together in a riveting and meticulous fashion. I was spellbound by this story.

I look forward to reading more books from this talented writer.

About The Author:

Matthew Sullivan received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. 

In addition to working for years at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he currently teaches writing, literature, and film at Big Bend Community College in the high desert of Washington State. He is married to a librarian and has two children.