I can’t remember how this book got on the radar but I’m sure the combination of fantasy and books had a big part to do with it. And when I was browsing at the library recently, I came across book two in the series, which reminded me that I had never read book one! So time to remedy that.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London starts when Susan goes to London to find out more about her father who’s been absent from birth. However, her mother’s friend turns out to be rather… supernatural and is killed by a left-handed bookseller, the perhaps too-charming Merlin. Together with his sister Vivian, the trio try to find out what really happened to their parents (or who their parents are) and keep Susan safe from all the supernatural beings who are targetting her.

As you can probably tell from the title, this was a lot of fun. The plot is fast and I quickly grew fond of our three main characters. Merlin might have been a bit too much Maniac Pixie Dream Boy by himself, but I thought Vivien and Susan grounded him very well and he was just the quirky one in the trio. It was nice having Vivien too, since it was clear that Merlin cared for his sister very much and made him more “normal” in my eyes.

I also really enjoyed the worldbuilding. This is a world with many layers, and ‘truths’ are often found in fantasy novels. As a result, the book is littered with titles of classic fantasy tales, and fans of the genre might enjoy the overt references to all the tales that came before; I know I did.

Overall, this was a quick (I literally binged it in a morning) and fun read. It’s not quite classic fantasy, given that Susan is a punk (is that the right term?) and we are in an alternate version of 1980s England, but I had so much fun reading this. I’m definitely going to borrow book two – this time the physical copy from the library.