Still, the mystery elements are well executed, as is Charlie's characterization, and the big twist at the end packs a satisfying punch. 'There's a lot of flipping back and forth between the past and the present, and though both timelines are well plotted and suspenseful, the story leans a touch too hard on the flashbacks. Her world is gritty and mysterious, the stakes are always high, and the power is always tempting.' - Library Journal (starred review)

She's desperate, she's profane, she's fascinating, and she kicks ass and takes names with the best antiheroes of the genre. 'Charlie Hall is every 'bad luck and worse trouble' protagonist to ever magic her way into urban fantasy. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends into a maelstrom of murder and lies.ĭetermined to survive, she's up against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world―all trying to steal a secret that will give them vast and terrible power. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that Charlie's shadowless, and possibly soulless, boyfriend has been hiding things from her. Bartending at a dive, she's still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Now, she's trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but getting out isn't easy.

And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall.

Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. She's spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of betrayals, cabals, and a dissolute thief of shadows, in the vein of Neil Gaiman and Erin Morgenstern.Ĭharlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn't pick, a book she couldn't steal, or a bad decision she wouldn't make.

Book of night holly black review