Book Review :: Book of Night by Holly Black

Book of Night by Holly Black
ISBN: 1250812194
on 3 May 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal
Pages: 304
Goodreads

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.

Last updated on 13 May 2025

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What is Book of Night by Holly Black about?

Book of Night by Holly Black is about Charlie Hall. In her world, shadows aren’t just shadows. People can mess with them to change how they look, mess with someone’s emotions, or even tweak their memories. But there’s always a catch. Playing around with shadows can take hours or days off your life. And since shadows hold all the stuff you’d rather keep hidden, sometimes they get a little out of control.

“Love was a family religion, passed down to her when she’d been too young to protect herself from belief.”

Charlie’s doing her best to stay out of trouble. She’s bartending, picking up the odd side gig from clueless rich folks, and doing her best to steer clear of the whole magical shadow-trading scene she used to know way too well. Things are going okay, all things considered.

But then someone from her past shows up and turns everything upside down.

My thoughts on Book of Night

I’m going to struggle to write this review, I think. I wanted so badly to like this book. The Folk of the Air series by Holly Black is so good, starting with The Cruel Prince, and I also really enjoyed The Darkest Part of the Forest. Perhaps I had those and others by Black in my head too much when I went into Book of Night. 

Let me just start by saying that I really did love the idea of this story. The idea that shadows can be a whole being on their own – it’s giving Peter Pan – and can be part of you, and be so different at the same time … brilliant. 👏🏻 I also enjoyed diving into a dark, noir-type book, as I had read anything like it in a little while, and I think the tone and the writing definitely suited the genre.

“Never met a bad decision she wasn’t willing to double down on. Had fingers made for picking pockets, a tongue for lying, and a shriveled cherry pit for a heart.”

I also really liked how Charlie was a thief, a bit of a con-artist … I love a good con and heist. Some of my favourite characters in book over the years have been thieves, or sleight of hand experts, or what have you. So she had that going for her, too.

And here’s where it takes a bit of a turn.

The magic/paranormal/fantasy element with the shadows, while very cool, was lacking something. Perhaps a little more depth, a little clarity, perhaps. I think it probably needed to be explored a bit more, as I found moments of confusion throughout the book, too many times for my liking. It was also quite slow in some parts, and it felt like a bit of a sluggish journey through what is actually not a long book at all.

Charlie, as a character, while interesting at the beginning, soon became a bit flat for me. Her love interest, Vince, was average. I didn’t care for him.

I can definitely see the appeal of this story, but alas, it wasn’t a great read for me. You can see I’ve given it 2-stars, It was okay, and it was. The few parts of it I did like added a star, but I don’t think I enjoyed it enough to read the next book in the series, Thief of Night. 

Have you read Book of Night by Holly Black? What did you think?