The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-designer—and desperateness, curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.
After just a few days on the job, Clay begins to wonder about the few and rather odd customers that repeatedly visit Mr. Penumbra’s unconventional bookstore in the middle of the night. Mr Penumbra’s regulars never buy books, but merely check them out.
It doesn’t take long before Clay concludes that the bookstore is a front for something larger and more mysterious. With the help of his unusually well suited friends for the task, Clay starts an underground investigation into what is really going on at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. An investigation which ends up having some significant consequences when Clay turns up some surprising answers.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel
I was totally fascinated by all the techie stuff in the book and think Sloan must have a pretty in-depth knowledge of the likes. I also found myself wondering if a lot of the random locations in the book are actual ones because of the intense details that Sloan gives her scenes.
The denouement of the story was a tiny bit of a let down, but in my opinion, mostly because there wasn’t much of a place for it to go without the story crossing over into fantasy/sci-fi. That said, with keeping it real, Sloan tied things up pretty nicely, and overall, this was an interesting, fun book.
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Overall Rating: 
1/2
Parent’s guide:
- Sex: it is implied that a man and woman have sex, some kissing, a character makes his money by creating the video game/film cartoon graphics for woman’s boobs so some mild talking about boobs
- Violence: none
- Language: a few swear words, but pretty mild overall
