Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2WLTD9LHN3ID5?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a sweet, winsome, gentle book that was a light and enjoyable read. It was also something of a shout-out to people like me who never get any recognition and barely recognize themselves as a group, viz, booklovers, bibliophiles.

I've always known, and never thought much about, my love for bookstores. When I travel to a different city, I will invariably end up in the local bookstore. The smell of bookstores always takes me back to an easier and happier time. For that matter, I practically raised my kids at Borders and Barnes & Noble.

That's why I enjoyed the protagonist's description of books and bookstores. We can tell that author Robin Sloan is a big-time nerd. (It's also why I can recognize Mr. Penumbra's bookstore as a thinly-disguised “City Lights Bookstore” in San Francisco, right down to the Condor Club (featuring Carol Doda, if you are old enough to remember, catty-corner across the street.)

Clay comes to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in search of a job. he gets the graveyard shift and starts noticing an odd clientele getting odd books. It becomes a mystery that Clay feels he has to solve. Along the way, he meets a cute nerdette and discovers the strangest secret society devoted to the weirdest secret ever described. There is moderate adventure and low-risk conflict. Clay presents as a typical urban fantasy nerd with the usual self-effacing humor, although this really is not a fantasy, but it could easily have been one, and a epic fantasy novel figures prominently in the solution.

Does Clay prevail?

Read the book. It's very nice and you will enjoy it.

I might recommend this as Young Adult, but for the fact that the relationship between Clay and his girlfriend is a “mature” relationship. Perhaps it would work for older YAs?