Wow. Wow. Wow. I didn’t see that twist coming!
I was hooked on this from the very first page.
Both Laura and Roach were so well roundly written and I loved reading from both of their perspectives.
Alice Slater has penned a brilliant book, I hope it’s wildly successful. It’s definitely an obsession. I hope the author has more books planned.

With the hugest of thanks to the publishers and the author for allowing me to read such a fantastic book.

With many thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton

To be honest I probably would have bypassed this book if I hadn’t been sent the ARC. Not a great cover or title and an unknown author. But I’m so pleased to have been able to read this book! Set from the POV of Roach - highly disturbed and Laura - car crash waiting to happen. I loved the scenes set in the bookshop the author did a really good job of setting the scene. This book starts off slow and while it doesn’t build to a racing pace it’s still a very good read.

Set in a book shop in my local area, this should’ve been right up my alley - but it just didn’t hit the mark. It felt like a YA book and I didn’t really care for the characters and found the storyline quite repetitive.
I’m in the minority with my review, as most other readers loved it - but I’m always honest and it would be boring if we all liked the same books!
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Oh my gosh! This book definitely lives up to the hype I’ve been hearing about it. It has me hooked from the first chapter. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

Roach is a true crime obsessive, friendless except for her pet snail and works in a bookshop.

Laura is a sparkling shiny person with her cute outfits and effortless style she is the most popular bookseller.

Roach feels Laura is as interested in the morbid and macabre as she is even though Laura’s contempt for Roach is obvious but she is determined to know everything about her life regardless of the consequences.

This is such a fantastic book, dripping with malice and tension. It is a dark journey into obsession. The pop culture references and dark humour throughout make this an engrossing and enjoyable read. The story will get under your skin and make you itch. Told in alternating POV between the two characters in short snappy chapters. They both work in a neglected dilapidated bookshop.

This is a study of crossing boundaries into obsession with a deliciously dark seam of true crime and snappy dialogue. The cover is incredible and I think sums up this thriller so well. An excellent read.

Death of a Bookseller is released on 27th April 2023. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for ARC.

This is an intriguing book, set in the world of retail book sales, following the intertwined stories of Roach, true crime fangirl and snail enthusiast, and Laura, drafted in to Roach's workplace to cover absence. Laura has opinions, lots of them, including about the true crime genres and whether they are inherently exploitative. This thread is well explored.
Although none of the characters are likeable I suspect a lot of readers will recognise their characterisation and empathise with aspects of their behaviours. There are some very deliberate homages to Highsmith and some amusing skewering of retail life and the kind of aimless nightlife of people in their 20s and perhaps 30s. The slow build revealing more about the characters as the plot unfolds will make some readers impatient, but I found the suspense worked. For me, the ending, was the right mix of tying loose ends into a bow and then pulling on one of them with a feeling of unease. I can imagine this working well on the small screen, in the right hands.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I read it in one sitting that I may have sat a few too many hours into the next day! Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for access to this book

This book started off slow but it was immediately interesting. I loved the mind of Roach and how she came across to other people. It is a dark and gossipy book!

A dark and disturbing novel. More a psychological drama than a thriller, it follows the toxic relationship between two colleagues, one a true crime afficionado, the other the grieving daughter of a murder victim. Although well written, I disliked the characters but the story had a satisfying ending.

What a gloriously sinister, triumph of a book!
So unique with two protagonists on the opposite ends of the spectrum. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know both of them and I’m still not sure who is my favourite… Alice or Roach. They both have their own demons which adds depth to the storyline. I will be recommending as an unusual page-turner.

Instead of starting 2023 with something light, bright and breezy, I decided to pick up "Death of a Bookseller." And what a great decision it was! I loved this disgusting little book so much, with a plot as dark and sticky as pint of Strongbow Dark Fruits (which, incidentally, is the preferred drink of one of its protagonists.)

Alice Slater really digs down into the heart of what it is to be lost and alone and an absolute fuck-up in your mid 20s, stuck in a job you don't really like and which barely pays the bills. Pretty much all of the characters are horrible people, but Roach in particular is a literary creation which will linger in your mind long after you've turned the final page. She is as tenacious and creepy as a cockroach, scuttling into dark corners and prying into precious personal possessions. I absolutely despised her and yet couldn't tear myself away.

Slater is a person who knows and loves a London that the rest of us don't see - a London made up of scummy rock pubs, night buses, the backrooms of bookshops and terrible flats riddled with drafty windows and mouldy kitchen floors. Her characters drink too much, wear unwashed clothes to work and frequently make terrible life decisions. I heavily related to Laura because I was her in my 20s, cheap wine addiction and all. There's also more than one nod to Patricia Highsmith, who also owned a snail called 'Bleep.'

Everything about this book is awful. It deserves to be huge.

Deliciously dark with prose laden with emotional depth - not what I expected at all. Much slower paced that I expected and surprisingly light on plot but I really flew through it as the characters were so expertly crafted I couldn't stop reading to find out how the story would unravel. A brilliant debut.

Loved everything about this- the setting, the pace, the dual point of view, the incredibly vivid characters, and I could go on and on! Truly a deliciously disgusting little book that I will push into the hands of everyone I know, and I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up on a lot of people's list of 'best of 2023'!

When I say this is the book I have been most anticipating in recent memory it’s no exaggeration.

I know Alice and love her podcast What Page are You On? so I’ve known about her debut novel for a while, and everything I’ve heard about it has made me more and more excited about it. I was absolutely over the moon to be approved for it!

Death of a Bookseller is going to be absolutely huge next year. It’s dark story of obsession and messy female relationships, set to a backdrop of book selling.

The characters are so well-realised that I find myself thinking about them as though they are real people, and Alice’s background as a bookseller makes the perfect setting.

As someone who is hesitant around true crime, this book perfectly addresses why I find it uncomfortable whilst also understanding its popularity. It also manages to be a perfectly twisty thriller at the same time.

This is an absolute masterclass in storytelling and I know I’ll be reading it again when it comes out.

Not only a 5 star book, and not only one of my favourites of the year, but added to my all-time favourites list.

So, this WILDLY exceeded my (already high) expectations!! 📖🔪

📚 'Death of a Bookseller' by Alice Slater is about two women - Laura and Roach - who both work in the same chain bookshop (sounded a bit like a Waterstones). Roach has an obsession with serial killers & Laura disagrees with 'true crime' as a literary genre, which creates tensions which escalate the longer they work together.

🚔 While this book was mainly about the complex relationship between Laura & Roach, it also explores the implications of true crime books & podcasts on real life victims & survivors. I'm quite partial to a true crime podcast & this really made me rethink how I consume this type of media. This theme added depth to the story & made this book really stand out as something a bit different.

⚡ Alice Slater absolutely NAILS the pacing in this. Not so fast that you lose out on the detail & feeling of suspense, but gripping enough that I binge-read the whole thing in a couple of days.

✍️ It's told through a dual point of view, which worked extremely well - it highlighted the contrasting motivations & attitudes of the two narrators, and I felt like I was really inside the characters' heads.

✨ Overall, a very self-aware novel with vivid characters and an interesting take on true crime as a genre - I would highly recommend getting this on your 'to be read' list for next year!

🗓️ Comes out 27th April 2023

- Katie

Review to be posted on Instagram (@katiespencebooks) today and Twitter (@katiespencey) on Friday

I loved this darkly comic little slice of noir from Alice Slater.
Cleverly weaving two parallel narratives between Brodie/Brogan and Laura who are set on a collision course thanks to Brogan's obsession with serial killers and Laura's history, all played out on the stage of the bookstore they work in.

As an ex-bookseller, who also loves true crime, I enjoyed how Slater skewers and mocks current obsessions and fads, whilst still maintaining pathos for the real victims of serial killers.

Acid sharp and pacy, this is definitely one to watch for 2023.

Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC.

What a horrible little book!

Death of a Bookseller is told from the perspectives of two colleagues at Spines, a chain bookstore in Walthamstow. Roach, an unwashed true crime fanatic, is obsessed with Laura, who is fragrant and popular, but troubled by the murder of her mother at the hands of a serial killer.

If you're looking for likeable characters, you won't find them here, but you will find a well-written, tense and suspenseful story with plenty to say about the ethics of the way we consume true crime. (There's also loads to enjoy if you have ever worked as a bookseller - I couldn't help picturing Spines as "my" old branch of Waterstones, which was very fun indeed.)

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and #Netgalley for a proof copy of #DeathofaBookseller. This is one I was super excited to read in 2023, and it didn't disappoint.

This book had an interesting premise told from two very different characters. I found one of those characters so unpleasant that I nearly gave up, However I persisted and tried to understand this character. I still did not like her and found her behaviours unacceptable. This book challenged me in its darkness but it was well written and kept me engaged.

A deliciously horrible thriller about the dark little obsessions lurking within the people we see everyday. This book pushed so many buttons for me - obsessive girls, sticky Camden pubs, messy nights out and the nauseous regrets of the morning after, a bookshop that will be very familiar to alumni of a certain black and white high street chain. It had me cackling and grimacing in equal measure. A creepy delight.

Set during the run up to Christmas, Alice Slater’s hugely enjoyable novel follows Roach who’s worked in the dingy Walthamstow branch of Spines for nine years, and Laura, one of three seasoned booksellers parachuted in with the aim of saving it from closure.
Roach runs the true crime section and is fascinated by serial killers. Laura is the opposite, writing poetry which seeks to honour murdered woman not their murderers. Both women grew up in Walthamstow while the Stow Strangler was on the loose and after Laura gives a poetry reading which the shop team attend, Roach becomes convinced she's hiding something. Over the next three months, Roach’s stalking becomes ever more obsessive, and Laura begins to unravel.
Roach’s behaviour provides much of the tension as Laura’s careful control begins to crumble. Both are damaged in very different ways: Roach deals with her negligent upbringing and her desperate neediness with a snarky contempt for ‘normies’ while Laura’s carefully curated wardrobe, small treats and sunny exterior is a strategy for controlling the sharp pain of grief. It’s all very smartly done, and I loved its clever ending, but there’s a serious message here about our obsession with crime, both true and fiction, and in particular violence against women. I raced through Slater’s novel which is steeped in the sort of detail any bookseller, past or present, will recognise. Despite having left the trade quite some time ago, I felt as if it was just yesterday that I’d been behind the till.