The Astral Library

Author: Kate Quinn
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2026
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend

  

Synopsis: Alexandria "Alix" Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives. . .inside their favorite books.

The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life. a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian free through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy - Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself?

Review: I stepped outside my usual genres and into fantasy only because this is a Kate Quinn novel. Fantasy / Magical Realism will never be my cup of tea, and after this I will probably stop trying to find a novel in that genre that I like.

This book also felt like a lecture on several issues, which made it even harder for me to get into. I wish she would have stuck to the premise of exploring living inside books, which is what this novel claims to be about, but it isn't.