“The Woman in the Library” by Sulari Gentill

This was a fun book. And very meta! I came across it in the eighth issue of Oh Reader magazine (which, by the way, I have just realized I only tangentially mentioned once previously, and as such I am remiss. I have greatly enjoyed that magazine, and since you are a reader, I know you will too. Check it out! But back to the book). The Woman in the Library was one of the books featured in "Oh Reader's TBR: Some of the new and upcoming books on our to-be-read list." Which, of course, encouraged me to place it on my own TBR.

So, meta. Are you ready? Sulari Gentill is an Australian crime fiction author writing the story of a bestselling Australian author named Hannah Tigone. Hannah is in the process of writing a murder mystery whose protagonist, Winifred (Freddie) Kincaid, is an Australian writer in residence at Harvard, having won the Sinclair scholarship. Freddie in turn is writing a murder mystery, based largely on life, since a writer for the student newspaper was found murdered in the library the day Freddie met her new friends Cain, Whit and Marigold. Freddie works on her novel while she is simultaneously consumed by trying to solve the murder (and subsequent dangerous events) with her friends. Meanwhile, Hannah sends every chapter she writes about Freddie to her American novelist friend Leo, and he responds to Hannah with helpful suggestions for improving the plot.

I didn’t love this book from the very beginning. (Was it only because the characters in Hannah’s book had such silly names? Surely not; this actually didn't bother me much because I was able to blame that on Hannah rather than Sulari.) It took me a surprisingly long time to get into. But I think by about 80 pages in, I was in. It may not be great literature or a classic for the generations, but it was clever and I enjoyed its shades of Only Murders in the Building, which is nothing if not fun. I liked puzzling through the whodunit of Freddie's life while simultaneously being creeped out by Leo's increasing helpfulness and insistence.