The Astral Library

Interview with author Kate Quinn

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3YhxwnqXUx0OIznyOWSmWN?si=ECbbArLFSsGtncBBg-MOPQ

About The Astral Library

Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives…inside their favorite books.

The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy—Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself?

I really NEED a magic library

I feel like every bookworm will love the very premise of this book. Kate Quinn asks “what book would you live in if you could?” in The Astral Library. The main character, Alix, is a young woman who starts the book off when her debit card is denied for a food purchase. She had caluclated the cost of the food and any potential tax and was certain there was enough money in her account. Only, a bank error has rendered her account empty. From there she is late to her coffee shop job and is ultimately fired when she snaps at a shitty customer. I feel like Alix is the average millenial. There are no breaks to catch and the shit just keeps hitting.

It is at this point that she wanders into one of her favorite places, the Boston Library. Only when she walks in, it isn’t the library she knows. Alix has entered into a world where you can live as a side character in any book.

I really enjoyed the realism that Alix brings to the book as a character. She is quite literally everyone I know from my small hometown and myself too. I feel her pain when she is counting pennies and I envy her adventure in The Astral Library.

If you like books that love books, pick up The Astral Library. Kate Quinn has spun quite a wonderful adventure in the pages of this story.