Book Review: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

I really really really liked he way this one started (and the cover – I LOVE the cover). I feel like I say that about Gentill’s work often. Equally often, I seem to find myself struggling a bit with the wind ups she offers… That was the case here also.

After an absolutely stellar start and a really fabulous construct, things started to slowly lose their grip a little bit but managed to stay tight enough for the vast majority of the book that I really thought this was going to be the one to break the chain for me with her work. Unfortunately I found the wrap up here to feel like it was written on a different pace – and with a different set of expectations – than the preceding 70/so% of the book, and that bright it to a solid 3 stars for me.

She is a talented writer and she has a vivid imagination and magnificent ideas. But it seems as though she tries to wrap things up by throwing lots of drama in when it comes to the big reveals, to the detriment of the overall story. Sometimes less really is more. It makes things feel unnecessarily convoluted and requires more suspensions of disbelief then the story can handle, and the result is an uneven story.

It’s not an enjoyment-killing level of uneven. I did still quite enjoy this one on the whole, and I will definitely keep reading her books (this was the best of them so far to my mind). I do hope she will consider paring down the layers a bit in her endings though, to pace them more evenly with her magnificent setups, in which case she will hit every book out of the park…

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.