This was a well told psychological thriller even if the plot regarding the "killer" nurse and her motives isn't completely original - sadly in both fact and fiction. I did find the referencing to the Shirley Jackson book quite irritating at times as I haven't read it and wondered if maybe I was missing a subtle plot point.
Thank you to netgalley and Verve books for an advance copy of this book.

I read this book in one sitting, I just couldn't put it down! It is the perfect psychological, suspenseful thriller. A highly entertaining read.

Oh, a nice cosy little book about librarians working in a library? WRONG! 🔪🔪🔪

📖 'How Can I Help You' by Laura Sims is about Margo, who's just left her job as a nurse to start working at a small local library. She enjoys her work until Patricia starts as the new librarian. They begin to get to know each other and things start going very wrong, and getting very weird indeed.

💛 I binged this in a couple of sittings. The tension & suspense guarantees you'll want to keep reading - from the start you KNOW that Margo is hiding something, and there's a real sense of foreboding & unease which builds as it goes on.

🧾 The switches to Patricia's point of view were great, especially when you've already let your opinion be shaped by Margo's assumptions about Patricia. The two women are dragged into a game of cat & mouse, both waiting for the other to put a foot wrong.

🚑 I found the segments about Margo's former life as a nurse really unsettling, especially after some of the stories which have hit the news over the past couple of years. Laura Sims does a fantastic job of writing a character who is quite obviously not sane, but rationalises & justifies everything to herself.

📕 I especially enjoyed the subtle social commentary & exploration of the 'customer service' façade Margo & Patricia have to put on while working with the public. Laura Sims asks the question 'what if the façade was dropped?' and takes it to the extreme.

💥 As I was reading, I was concerned that the built up tension wouldn't go anywhere, and that all the suspense would have been for nothing. I was not disappointed - the ending was perfect & disturbing in equal measure.

📚 Overall, an excellent book which I'd highly recommend to anyone who's after a gripping read about two extremely unhinged women. Weird, witty, and darkly funny - a must read!

🗓️ This book publishes with verve books on 25th July.

🎁 Thank you netgalley for my advance reader copy.

- Katie

A really original story line and very entertaining. However, I wasn't really gripped by it, and the ending felt a little odd. However, definitely worth a read.

I enjoyed this unusual thriller set in a quiet small town library. The denouement was very satisfactory and the narrative disturbing. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

Initially, when I read the blurb on the back of the book, I was excited for the story. However, after diving into the novel, I found the two main characters to be so unlikable that I couldn't even appreciate them as intentionally unlikable characters. This wasn't my favorite book by Laura Sims, but I'll still consider her other works, such as Looker among my favorites!

Books about books are inexplicably appealing. Books about bookshops, libraries, publishing, etc., pretty much always do well. That was the first thing that attracted me to How Can I Help You by Laura Sims - it’s set in a library. When I found out that it was also a suspenseful thriller it was game over and I was sold. How Can I Help You explores “the dark side of human nature and the dangerous pull of artistic obsession”. I was sent this copy by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

As a middle-aged, positively unremarkable small town librarian, Margo Finch finds it quite easy to go unnoticed. She is friendly with her colleagues and patrons, is always punctual, and applies herself dutifully to her work. She’s obliging and friendly, when she knows that someone is looking. It’s definitely an easier life than the one she left behind. Nobody in her life has any reason to suspect that Margo isn’t her real name, or that she’s currently on the run, suspected for murder due to a trail of unexplained deaths at the hospital she used to work at. Margo is a new woman now, she’s turned a new page and found solace in the peace and monotony of the library. She rarely, if ever at all, thinks of murder.

Patricia’s boyfriend is controlling, her first novel was a failure, and now she’s been forced to move to an unfamiliar area to take a library reference job that she’s not even sure she wants. It’s safe to say, she’s down on her luck. Not particularly interested in the prattle of befriending her coworkers, Patricia stays at her desk and spends her days answering mundane, irrelevant phone calls from the general public, and observing those around her with an innocent “writer’s curiosity”. It is exactly this curiosity that leads Patricia to notice some slips in Margo’s carefully constructed façade.

“Her look makes me feel as if she's turning me over in her hands, inspecting my spine and pages for wear, thumbing my table of contents. Or what she thinks is my table of contents.”

When a library regular is found dead in the bathroom, everyone is quick to assume that there has been a tragic accident. Everyone, that is, except Patricia, who saw the gleeful glint in Margo’s eyes as she left the room. Noticing Margo’s sinister side, Patricia can’t help but to start digging, and discovering Margo’s past quickly becomes an all-consuming fixation. Margo has no intention of allowing Patricia to ruin the new life she has so carefully constructed, and Patricia has no idea who she is dealing with.

I absolutely devoured this book. It’s just over 250 pages, so it’s definitely one to devote an afternoon to and read in one sitting. Both of the protagonists are unreliable and exceptionally dislikeable, which left me conflicted about who to root for – murderous ex-nurse or intense, obsessive novelist? The novel is told in five parts, each with perspectives from Margo and Patricia in first person. This allows the reader into the psyche of the women, and displaying their polarised perceptions of events. It starts slow, but, mirroring the women’s relationship, picks up the pace as more secrets are revealed.

Patricia sort of reminded me of the clichéd character in every horror film – you know, the one that suggests that the group splits up, or decides to go in to a haunted building. She is acutely aware of the danger she’s in by befriending Margo, yet she can’t stop herself. She invents a myriad of excuses as to why she does this but in reality she’s driven by the obsession of writing a successful book, and Margo makes an excellent femme fatale. A muse, if you will. Obsessing over Margo gives Patricia not only something to do in an otherwise dull day-job, but it inspires and fuels her need to write. She’s aware that the closer she gets to Margo the more in harms way she finds herself, but the potential writing content seems too good to miss. As much as I hate the phrase, it felt like Patricia acted ‘for the plot’.

There is something about Margo that is so utterly chilling. Large parts of her character present very normal, even relatable. Yet, beneath her cool exterior, Margo is not so well-adjusted. I found her relationship with ‘Friday Guy’ particularly unnerving. To summarise: they have a regular library patron who often must be reprimanded for the inappropriate material accesses on the library computers. I think that in any customer-facing job, people can relate to the character of the strange, creepy man. Friday Guy isn’t aggressive or difficult, he is simply a bit weird and creepy. Margo giggles with her co-workers when it comes to deciding who should be the one to intervene, feigning reluctance, when in reality she looks forward to his visit every week. She gleans pleasure from hovering over him, whispering menacing things in his ear. It is moments like this that remind the reader that no, in fact Margo is not as sweet as she seems.

“Men can never keep their violence to themselves.”

In short, if you like dark psychological thrillers, books about books, or murderous women, this is the book for you. I genuinely really enjoyed the read, and think it’s a great short novel to break you out of a reading slump.

Who would have thought that a book about two librarians would be so good? I definitely had reservations before I started reading this but I’m glad I have it a chance.

It’s an original and tense thriller that I devoured in a single sitting.

Margo is a middle aged librarian, she arrived into town and into her role in the library two years ago and is charming, competent, professional and pleasant. Margo loves the library and is settled into her new life but nobody knows that Margo is not her real name and that before working in the library, she was a nurse who left a string of hospitals suddenly, the last one in the middle of the night, leaving a stream of premature deaths in her wake.
When Patricia joins the library staff she immediately is aware that all is not as its seems with Margo, she spots signs of a darker edge to her courteous colleague and when a library patron is found dead in strange circumstances in the bathroom, Patricia's unease about Margo develops into a deep fixation.
I really enjoyed this, a cat and mouse style suspense between two librarians one of whom has a propensity for murder , its a great idea and setting for a book and Sims brings these characters to life with skill and detail. This was well paced, unsettling and hard to put down. Recommend.

A really good thriller featuring the narrative of Margo and Patricia and their intertwined lives in the Carlyle Public Library. A satisfying conclusion to a tense showdown

A fun and weird story of a former killer nurse who "disappears" and starts a job as a librarian and meets a new colleague who starts to uncover Margo's previous life.

I loved the setting (a library ofc) the main characters - Margo & Patricia - and their weird and creepy relationship.

It's best to go into this story not knowing much and watch it unfold.

How Can I Help You was a really fun, slightly psychotic tale about an unhinged character trying to survive in a mundane society - it had a bit of a Nurse Ratchet feeling to it. Jane / Margo was killing patients in her nurse role before she was forced to quit and take a job in a library. While she is trying to live a normal life, the urge doesn't leave her. And her new colleague is very interesting to her.
It was really fun and it was entertaining to read this, I also enjoyed the twist at the end because I figured Patricia was a bit of a red herring from the beginning. She was a bit fixated on Margo and particularly when she unearthed her past.

This book was surprising and original in its oddness. It was well paced but not fast, and the two protagonists were well drawn and strangely relatable. However, the ending for me was unsatisfactory and incomplete - maybe this is a ploy by the Author, Laura Sims, to keep the reader wanting more.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publishers, Verve Books for this ARC.

This book was a very interesting slowburn literary thriller that played with a lot of different ideas and themes.
I did enjoy this book for what it was, but it really didn't blow me away. I didn't like how a lot of it was retelling the same events but from a different point of view. I thought the characters were really interesting, but I did feel like the plot was lacking slightly.
I liked margos chapters much more than patricias, if I am being completely transparent. I found her more compelling.
Overall I would still recommend this but only to a specific person or a specific mood. I wouldn't go into this with thriller expectations, it leans much more literary.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for access to an early copy.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!
A cozy mystery novel that one can enjoy with a warm cup of tea and in a long sitting. I had a fun time reading and guessing what's gonna happen next.

"How Can I Help You" by Laura Sims is like a chilling mystery wrapped in the cozy confines of a small-town library. Meet Margo, the seemingly unassuming librarian with a shadowy past. When Patricia, a keen-eyed newcomer, senses something off about Margo, she embarks on a spine-tingling journey to uncover the truth. Sims crafts a gripping narrative that keeps you on the edge of your seat, delving into the complexities of human nature and the allure of artistic fixation. With its taut plot and compelling characters, "How Can I Help You" is a captivating read that will leave you guessing until the very end.

Disgraced former nurse Margo has assumed a new identity as a small-town librarian, but when failed-novelist Patricia begins working at the same library, Margo's past threatens to catch up with her as the two colleagues become increasingly obsessed with one another.

I was immediately drawn to this book's cover and blurb; however, it unfortunately failed to live up to my expectations. I'm a sucker for stories with a dark edge, but for whatever reason, I found Margo's exploits lacking in intrigue. Despite some moments of tension, particularly in the third act, I felt the stakes between the two characters weren't quite high enough.

Patricia's fascination with Margo made for a more compelling point of view for me, and I could empathise with her struggles to make it as a writer. With that said, I did enjoy the dual POVs and seeing how the events played out from each character's perspective.

Overall, How Can I Help You doesn't quite live up to its premise, which reminded me of Alice Slater's brilliant Death of a Bookseller. I might have enjoyed this more if I hadn't already read Slater's debut last year, against which I couldn't help drawing comparisons.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Oldcastle Books for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

The plot of this book really intrigued me. It was relatively short and kept me interested the whole way through. The ending maybe felt a little rushed and I really would've liked to have seen more of Margo's back story.

3.5 stars round up.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy.

A librarian with a secret and an unconscious customer…. A book with twists, tension and obsession! What’s NOT to love… a story told from two points of view.

DNF - When I requested this book, I was hopeful that it would be something unique but as I read on I realized I could map the entire plot. I checked reviews & was rather shocked to see that the entire story was as I guessed in the opening pages. This was disappointing.