Lena’s Reviews > The Astral Library > Status Update

This book covers the life of Alex Watson, who is a young woman with no money, fired from her job, and who lived her childhood in the foster system, after not knowing her father and being abandoned by her mother. Books have always been her refuge, and she’s extreme well read. After losing her job, she also found out that somebody stole her identity and locked her bank accounts. She goes into the Boston Public library at which point a door opens for her and she enters, and it turns out that she had walked her way into the Astro library. This library is a safe Haven for people who are desperate, and in a low of their life, either through being abused or through some other trauma that had happened to them.

The Astral library is a place where an individual can enter into a book and basically live their life parallel to the main characters of that story. They’re basically allowed to start a new life within the books. You’re only allowed three book choices however. Alex meets the librarian who is a grumpy chubby librarian with square glasses. She walks Alex through what the process is of being in this library. The library itself is magical and huge, and filled with every single book, in addition to unlimited food. Time stand still while you’re in the library, but does not stand still once you enter a book. Essentially, what happens is that the library board, who is this bureaucratic entity, wants the library and fired in order to modernize and monetized the library itself. They want to remove access for children and remove all the people from the books stories unless they can afford to be there. They essentially try killing or severely harming the librarian because she has not been receptive to their bureaucratic means of trying to remove her. After the librarian is hurt and falls into a coma after one of the attacks from the library board, Alex has to step up and find a way to protect the library and to protect the librarian. The library board is trying to find her as well, so she basically leads them on a wild goose chase through many storybook lines. While the librarian is still in her coma and is trying to heal, Alex discovers that her boss at the Boston public libraries actually the president of the board. She lures Alex out of the library by leaving a fake note from her mother stating that she has been following Alex through many of the books, and wants to help her and protecting the library. It turns out that was all false, and that Alex’s mom started a new life and family with someone she met in San Diego and owns an Etsy shop.

What ends up happening is that Alex allows the library board into the library in order to set up a meeting. She had prepared and read all of the bylaws for the library itself and attempted to protect it very much. She’s met with a ton of resistance on the board, decides to move forward with censoring some of the books, removing the children from the library, and also monetizing the library for $70 a month based on a teared system of what they have access to. The library itself in its mystery gets really upset and ends up, throwing the president of the board and Alex‘s former boss out the window never to be heard of again. Other members of the library board escape and are not to be heard from again. The librarian ends up waking up and Alex tells her everything that happened. Then the librarian offers Alex a job in this library, a training to be a librarian. Another character throughout the book is bow, who is a bisexual costume and dress designer who takes inspiration from centuries past. Basically him and Alex fall in love with each other, and they have a romance at the end of the book. He comes in and out of the library, but Alex is pretty much permanently in the library. The book ends on a very happy note.

The theme and motivation behind the book is so incredibly important, libraries, losing funding. Libraries are a safe Haven and a resource for so many people, and it is a free resource that really is a lifesaver for so many people. I certainly understand what Kate Quinn was trying to accomplish, but the main character Alex was so incredibly insufferable and tried to put her points across so many times by just yelling. She also came off as so, incredibly desperate and irritating throughout the story, that it was hard to emphasize with her, even though her life was objectively very sad. Because of the inability to connect with the characters, in addition to the very fancy full nature of the book itself, I overall did not like it. I also found the writing to be very underwhelming and the plot line to be underwhelming as well. Definitely would not recommend, which is sad to say because Kate Quinn is such an excellent author.