The Librarian of Crooked Lane

The Librarian of Crooked Lane
by C.J. Archer
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781922554208
Series: The Glass Library #1
Publication Date: January 1, 2022
Pages: 275
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Paranormal
Publisher: Self-published

Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she's descended from magicians, she's skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she's just an ordinary girl who loves books. She seeks the truth from a member of the most prominent family of magicians, but she quickly learns that finding the truth won't be easy, especially when he turns out to be as artless as her, and more compelling and dangerous than books.

War hero Gabe is gifted with wealth, a loving family, and an incredible amount of luck that saw him survive four harrowing years of a brutal war without injury. But not all injuries are visible. Burying himself in his work as a consultant for Scotland Yard, Gabe is going through the motions as he investigates the theft of a magician-made painting. But his life changes when he unwittingly gets Sylvia dismissed from her job and places her in danger.

After securing her new employment in a library housing the world's greatest collection of books about magic, Gabe and Sylvia's lives become intwined as they work together to find both the painting and the truth about Sylvia's past before powerful people can stop them.

A thoroughly average read that wasn’t a waste of time, but definitely was the perfect library loan.  I would have been displeased had I bought this, but as a library loan I can forgive a lot.  And there are quite a few things requiring forgiveness.

First off, the synopsis implies this book is a lot more involved than it actually is.   After securing her new employment in a library housing the world’s greatest collection of books about magic, Gabe and Sylvia’s lives become intwined as they work together to find both the painting and the truth about Sylvia’s past before powerful people can stop them.
But sometimes the past is better left buried…  Um… no.  I mean, yes, they’re searching for the painting, but there is no search for Sylvia’s past beyond occasional speculation, and there are no powerful people trying to stop them.  There’s an attempted kidnapping at the beginning that’s never explained, but perhaps that’s part of a series arc?  And the ‘magic’ isn’t really anything of the sort.  It’s described as magic and apparently spells are used, but as near as this book comes to explaining it, ‘magicians’ are merely people who are extraordinarily gifted at their chosen craft and are obsessed with it.  Which doesn’t strike me as all that magical.

For all of that though, the writing was good, and way better than average for a book that was apparently self-published.  While the writing lacked sophistication and polish, it was far better edited and copyedited than your average big publishing house efforts.  The plotting of the mystery was very well done too.  I feel like, had the author had a big publishing team pushing her, this could have easily been a 4 star read.

This was a fast read that Libby informs me took just a few minutes over 4 hours to finish.  If my libraries have the second book, I’d be happy to read it, and might enjoy it more now that my expectations have been adjusted by book 1.