Author: Michael Guillebeau
Publisher: Madison Press
Year: 2017
Genre: Fiction/Crime
Age: Adult 18+
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I must have walked past this book about 50 times & kept thinking I need to check that out. But since I'm a compulsive book checkouter (that is not even a word! LOL) I told myself no...the first 50 times. Then one night I finally decided to check it out & read it. Overall it was a good book. The story was entertaining but the execution of the story was a little flawed & the writing was disjointed. I'll explain below.
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Our story begins with Serenity Hammer, she is the head librarian at the Maddington Public Library in Maddington Alabama, soon to be know as just the MAD. Their city has taken away the funding for the library slowing but now completely except for the few dollars that still remain in their budget for the year. According to the city council there is much better things that could be done with that money. This is a story we as librarians here all the time! But Serenity wants to save her library for the betterment of the town & the world. She wants to fight for libraries everywhere starting with hers. But how?
During the consolidation of the city the library was given the city servers that now reside in the children's room of the library. They were also put in charge of the accounts & book keeping for the city. This turns out to be a super convenient thing for Serenity & the library. One of the library clerks named Amanda Doom is the tech genius behind the library desk & she stumbles upon an account that has a suspicious amount of money in it. The account is used for residual funds, this means that if your water bill is $34.51 cents the city will bill you $35 flat & the extra money will go into the residual fund. But as it turns out that's not what the fund is being used for at all.
There is a man within the city named Coucilman Doctor Bently, he is a big jerk & he doesn't care if the library is open or no because you can find everything on the internet including books. It is him that Serenity has to fight with to stay open. It turns out that he also has something to do with the money.
Serenity decides that since the library is in charge of the accounts she can control the money. As long as no one finds out & espically Bently of course...
She gains control of the money so that her library can have it's much needed expansion & some repairs etc done. The plan is to spend the money as fast as she can so why not seven stories of building in seven days? Unfortunately some problems come up along the way.
People start to get suspicious of where all this new found money came from. This includes Serenity's handsome southern husband named Joe who is a police detective. But Serenity has it all under control...maybe...
Our story takes a turn that involves murder, drugs, embezzlement, the mob, & some really big alligators! What else could go wrong?
In the end none of that matters if the MAD goes up on schedule & Maddington, AL becomes a city built on books...right?
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I can't really do a normal likes & dislikes section, this book is a little more complaicated than that so here it is..
The concept of this book was a great one. City library gets no funding because the government doesn't care about literacy. It's a very typical & unfortunately very common story to hear these days. But of course there's a librarian who is willing to risk it all to keep the library open. This is where the turn occurs...the book becomes a crime novel instead of a book about home town heroes & learning to help one another for the greater good. Somehow the story turns into a murder mystery involving a big drug dealer that uses the library as his hub & has paid off people in the city. This was exciting to read but it was a little out of place. On top of that the way the story is written is in little short chapters with TONS of dialogue. So one minute Serenity is having sex with her cop husband then the next shes in the library day drinking out of a rum bottle & talking to the library rat named Faulkner. Then the next chapter someone has died in the library & they are letting homeless people stay inside at night. Overall the story is a good one but the way it's told is a little weird.
On the plus side according to the note inside the book 1/2 of all the funds from this book being sold go towards the Awesome Foundation for Innovation in Libraries. This makes sense because the reason they need the MAD to be seven stories tall is so they an put in a day care, a women's shelter, a homeless shelter, a tech center, a small business start up, a cafe, & more library space. That is one of the more realistic parts of the book even though it's a big dream to have for a small town library. Those are all needs that the library meets or has to meet based on the needs of the community, another common library problem.
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