Review: Book of Night by Holly Black

This has never really come up here, but I am a huge fan of the Cruel Prince series by Holly Black. Although YA is not my favorite genre (I’m old 🤡) I found her writing to be very absorbing and evocative. So when I heard that Book of Night was going to be her adult debut, I was immediately interested.

Book of Night takes place in the real world, but one where magic can be performed through shadows. It follows a low-level con artist and thief Charlie Hall, whose life gets progressively messier as she allows herself to be drawn back into the underworld and intrigue of thieves, grimoires, and shadow magic. Charlie is a rough around the edges protagonist who isn’t afraid to make mistakes. She is trying to build a better life for her sister, stay out of the trouble that calls to her, and navigate what is her most stable relationship to date when she stumbles upon a murder.

Characters

Charlie was an interesting protagonist to me. She struck the right balance between curious and wary and well as callous and caring. From the flashbacks, the reader learns that her childhood was rough and unorthodox and it made sense to me that Charlie would be the way that she was. She has a lot of room to grow without being unlikable or too stupid of a protagonist.

The other main protagonists are Vince, Charlie’s boyfriend, and Posey, her sister. Both of them were fine. Vince, seemed very distant, but that made sense for the plot as Charlie has been seeing him but hasn’t actually gotten to know him that well yet. Posey, who longs to be a gloamist or shadow-magic user, skirted the fringes of being an annoying younger sister, but didn’t quite fall into the trope. I think that both she and Vince will get more development in the second book.

Plot & Worldbuilding

The beginning of the story is definitely a bit slower. You get a full sense of Charlie’s world, and even though the inciting incident of finding someone murdered happens fairly quickly into the introduction, there is a bit of a build-up before Charlie is pulled completely into the mystery. The narrative is also broken up by flashbacks. If you are someone who really likes quickly moving plots, this will definitely slow things down for you. I found that I didn’t mind it, however. I enjoyed being slowly pulled into the world.

As for the world itself, it is a modern-day Massachusetts where people have fairly recently learned of shadow magic. Charlie inhabits the fringes of society. She interacts with thieves and con-artists and is struggling financially. The world-building for me was fine. Since the shadow magic part is scaffolded into the modern day, I didn’t find anything too difficult to follow, though I did have some questions about how the magic worked and some of the ramifications of shadow altering.

Romance

The romance in this book is definitely secondary to the mystery element. It starts off with Charlie already in a relationship with Vince. As the plot progresses she realizes that neither one of them actually knows the other all that well. I typically don’t like romance when the relationship already exists at the start of the book, but since Vince and Charlie are both hiding so many secrets from each other it’s basically as if they are almost strangers. I did find the mystery of who Vince is to be very compelling and am looking forward to finding out more and seeing how the romance develops in Book 2. For readers who like spice, this is not explicit at all.

Overall

I really enjoyed reading this, even though it was a bit on the slower side. For me some of the action that unfolded near the climax was a little uneven, but Holly Black really blew me away with some of the twists that came up near the ending. The end, while it definitely could be standalone, definitely leaves an unsatisfactory feeling, so I am definitely going to be reading the next in the series. Overall a ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5 rating for me as I enjoyed the journey!