Book Review: The House of Marvellous Books by Fiona Vigo Marshall

My Rating:

 2.5⭐

Housed in a derelict library that has seen better times, The House of Marvellous Books is a publishing house on the verge of financial ruin. £1 million debt, a leaking roof, rodent infestation (despite the faithful library cat Moriarty patrolling the premises), outstanding payments to writers and the competition trying to poach their more popular writers are just a few of the problems The House is facing. There is a rumor of the library having in its possession a valuable medieval manuscript that even has the Vatican willing to pay a handsome amount, which would help save the establishment if only it were to be found. A new hire expected to save the day turns out to add to the mess and eventually, a dubious Russian company takes over, promising to turn the business around which raises more suspicion than confidence. Will the publishing house be saved or will the changes being introduced prove to be a final nail in the coffin for The House of Marvellous Books? 

The narrative takes us through the daily workings of the publishing house - the editorial meetings, difficult authors and internal staff with all their camaraderie and internal spats and rivalries - from the perspective of Mortimer Blakeley-Smith, the junior editor who is also secretly working on his own novel. We are also given a glimpse into his personal life especially his friendship with Hugo Castle, serving a six-year jail term for theft of valuable books from libraries across Europe.

I adore stories set in bookstores and libraries. Given that this story was set in a publishing house operating in an old library, I was naturally interested in Fiona Vigo Marshall's The House of Marvellous Books. The narrative is presented through a series of journal entries logged in over the course of a year by the main character, Mortimer Blakeley-Smith, which I felt is unique. The cast of characters is quirky and their interactions are quite entertaining with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Unfortunately though, this was not enough to hold the narrative together. There is not much movement in the story (for the first 3/4th of the novel) and what starts with an interesting premise and potentially entertaining narrative soon becomes slow and rambling and falls flat in the middle with a rush of things happening at the end. The narrative felt unnecessarily stretched and much of the details about Mortimer’s life outside the publishing house served no purpose. Add to this an overall weak plot with not much development in the story or its characters and the end result is a book that had potential but is sadly disappointing in execution. I also felt that a single PoV reporting all that was happening with the library and publishing house soon became monotonous and perhaps introducing another PoV could have rendered the narrative a tad more engaging. Overall , this novel did not hold my interest and I had to struggle to finish.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for providing the digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.