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The Library Suicides by Fflur Dafydd
The Library Suicides
by Fflur Dafydd
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With thanks to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for this ARC copy.

It is difficult to write about without giving away too much of it . It features two sisters who feel that their mother was driven to suicide by a book reviewer. We follow the view point of the four main characters. I struggled a little with the fact that the countrys were referred to as the little country and the neighbouring big country and references to the government.
This made it feel very Orwellian. It was difficult to feel for the characters as they were not particularly nice people.

Although I think the countries were ones I know well it felt like a make believe world far away from where we are now. I found it tedious at times and it took me 12 days to read this book whereas some I will read in 4 or 5
days. some of the passages are somewhat long winded and loses the thread of the story.

I'm glad that i read it as it is a divergence from the usual books Iread. I feel this would appeal to someone who likes to read books to make them think and as a possible future for the western world with their reliance on digital media

2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.

I was able to read this eARC with thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton (Publishers), in exchange for a review.

I was drawn to this one instantly for a number of reasons - the title, the cover, the description, all of which were creative and left a good first impression. Further, the author being Welsh (which I was able to glean from their name) did make me want to read this one; a little bit of nationality bias there, I'll admit!

To preface, this review is entirely my own opinion, and just my experience with the book. I feel that perhaps, despite my initial attraction to the novel, it was just not the story for me, and that's okay!

Firstly, this book is really well written. The descriptions of people, places and books were wonderful, and really helped me, as the reader, to visualise what was happening. I found the writing style well suited to me, and easy get into in that respect. Unfortunately, the story started a little slow for me, and I found myself struggling to get through it; there were pages and pages that seemed somewhat superfluous, not really serving to progress the plot. Whilst I don't usually mind stories that are introspective and heavily focused on the character's inner thoughts, this one just relied too heavily on that for me.

Once the story got underway and the plot started to move along, it was more enjoyable and less of a struggle for me. But it still felt slow getting there, and getting to the meat of it, dragging on in places where I felt there wasn't such a need for it. None of the characters were particularly likeable, and I didn't really connect with any of them, which made it more difficult; and the outcome, the ending, just didn't really satisfy me because of this. I wasn't particularly happy or sad or bothered about what happened to any of them, truth be told.

There were some plot points that I thought were really interesting, including the setting - not specifically described, but seeming to be a world like ours, though in the future, where paper is apparently a near extinct resource, and books are a thing of the past. The plots surrounding this were deepened at points in the novel but, unfortunately, they weren't developed enough at all, or even one of the main plotlines of the story. I feel for me personally, I would have preferred to have focused on the political, world building side of things than the drama which WAS the focus of the story (which I didn't find nearly as compelling, or interesting).

All in all, this was a book I thought I'd like and really wanted to like, but came up lacking. Maybe just not the story for me; I am sure others would certainly enjoy it, and the talent of the author is certainly evident. I would give a different book by the author a chance, even if this one fell flat for me.