The Library After Dark is a spell-binding read with darkness, gore and murder, just like the classic fairytales of yore.
After loving You Are Fatally Invited, I had very high expectations for this and it did not disappoint.
That concept is everything to me. I mean, a haunted library, bodies starting to stack up and fairytales that seem to mirror reality a little too close – that’s a combination you cannot let pass you by. Stories about stories, the publishing industry and the writing process are always fascinating to me and speak to that creative process which becomes intertwined with business endeavours and other factors. These fairytales are dark and Ande Pliego intersperses them within the narrative, both in the touches in the setting that honour them and the stories themselves. Certain theories and surprises come about in association with them too, which adds a new dimension to them and makes you want to reread to see what you may have missed the first time around. There is this blurred line between fantasy and reality, a liminal space where anything might just be possible. That magical realism element of this gave that Grimm fairytale touch to events which I thoroughly loved.
We begin in Aria’s perspective and instantly, she had my attention. She is this guarded person holding on to her secrets tight and unwilling to truly let others in. To have that romance come against those walls is endearing, but then everything is thrown by the surprise date at the Daedalus. Suddenly Aria cannot outrun her past and must confront the secrets she has buried deep. It’s an intriguing setup and you race through the pages to learn the truth. Luckily around Aria is a great cast of characters and this book has one of my favourite uses of multiple narrators I have seen for a little while. It does that classic trope of bringing you into each character’s perspective to share some of their secrets and let you glimpse the world through their eyes. It adds a different tension to this fateful night as you get this rich tapestry of people, relationships and dynamics that are not evident at first glance. What initially appears to be a random tour group ends up being so much more. I loved how unlikeable and complex these characters were at times. They are all there with their own motivations and history with these particular tales, but which of them is hiding the biggest secret of all?
The Daedalus is a fantastic setting. It is the library of your dreams with hidden passageways, beautifully intricate displays and enough books to fill a lifetime. Unfortunately it becomes a place of nightmares with blood spilt and some horrific scenes in store. There is something enchanting about a library at night and the childhood bookworm in us all dreamt of staying somewhere like that until the early hours, just reading in the peace and quiet. Pliego flips this on its head and creates an unsettling atmosphere that sends shivers down your spine. It is this Gothic space full of secrets and almost feels like a character in its own right, ready to defend its treasures to the hilt. From early on, this place has a mythos that is established within the story and you are questioning just how much of it is true. Pliego cleverly utilises this to further that liminal sense of this space and makes it feel tangible that there may be a literal haunting of the narrative at play.
The Library After Dark is a stellar sophomore novel that firmly places Ande Pliego on the map. If you’re not already a fan of her work, this will convince you and make you want to follow her career as it continues to unfold.
The Library After Dark is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis
A bookseller must escape the infamously haunted library that holds her darkest secrets, but with a murderer in her tour group, escaping alive is not as simple as it seems, in this twisty locked-room thriller from bestselling author of You Are Fatally Invited.
Not all fairytales were meant for children.
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.
