How Can I Help You Book Review

I’ll be honest and admit that I first picked up How Can I Help You by Laura Sims because the cover intrigued me. How could it not? A flaming library book card is not something you see every day. But as you’ll find out by reading this book, it does have something to do with the story.

This book went in a completely different direction than I expected. The characters were unpredictable. It made for a very interesting story that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Keep reading for my full thoughts on this thrilling novel. And if you enjoy my review, you can read more of my book reviews here.

What is How Can I Help You by Laura Sims about?

How Can I Help You is the story of Margo, a seemingly happy and helpful librarian. This is her first job at a library and she’s picked it up quite nicely. She gets a joy out of helping the patrons. She also gets along well with the rest of the staff at the library. She even lives close enough to walk to work. It’s the seemingly perfect gig for her.

But Margo has secrets. The things she tells her coworkers aren’t true. Her past isn’t exactly as it seems and she’ll do anything to protect her secrets. So when Patricia joins the library staff as the new reference library and seems similar to someone from Margo’s past, Margo is skeptical of her.

Patricia seems nice at first, but also a little reserved. She takes her job as the new reference librarian very seriously. But after witnessing Margo in an unusual situation with a library patron, Patricia starts taking note of the things that Margo does and says.

It’s nothing serious. Patricia is a writer who has tried many times to get published but has had no success. She gave up writing when she decided to take her position at the library. Any snippets she writes down about Margo are just little thoughts she has here and there.

But as Margo’s behavior gets stranger and stranger, Patricia becomes even more fascinated by her. Who exactly is this woman, and what is she running from?

Who is Laura Sims?

I was unfamiliar with Laura Sims and so I did a little bit of research about her before I started writing this review. According to her profile on goodreads she is a prolific writer in quite a few genres. You can read more about her here.

The Customer Service Scenes are SO REAL. And Pretty Funny

I wouldn’t say How Can I Help You is a particularly funny novel, but something that made me chuckle was how realistic all of the customer service scenes.

When Patricia begins working at the library, she isn’t sure what to expect. She figures people will come up to her desk and ask her reference or research questions. But what winds up happening over her first couple of days is that any ridiculous phone call that comes into the library gets transferred to her.

She is not pleased.

That made me laugh because I spent my early and mid twenties working at the front desk of the hotel and you would not believe all of the insane phone calls that we got. It got to the point where you just wanted to say to the caller, do you know how Google works? Because there’s a whole world wide web out there that can give you a better answer to that than I can!

But of course you can’t do that. You have to be polite. I also liked Margo’s scenes with library patrons. Whether she was actually helping people or telling Friday afternoon guy how it is, she always made me chuckle.

Why is How Can I Help You a good thriller novel?

Personally, I found this to be a really good thriller. I normally prefer to read domestic thrillers but the fact that this one focused on two female coworkers was really interesting to me. Laura Sims created an interesting atmosphere at the library. Combine that with their backstories and I had no idea who I could trust.

Sometimes Margo seemed like the more sane one and other times I sided with Patricia. As the story unraveled little by little and we learned the truth about Margo’s past, I was scared but also really anxious about what was going to happen next.

I enjoyed the fact that Margo and Patricia were both very curious about each other from the beginning, but also suspicious. It felt like every time they took a few steps closer towards friendship, one of them would then take a step back.

I think that’s part of what makes this such an enticing story. I really didn’t know what was going on with some of the characters.

And this is completely not thriller related but I loved the library setting. It reminded me a lot of the public library that I went to when I was growing up. The librarians all had their own personalities and some of them were nicer than others. There were always crowds of people on the public computer causing problems.

In Conclusion

I really enjoyed How Can I Help You by Laura Sims, and it makes me want to check out the rest of their work.

I love books that take place in a literary setting. For instance, I loved The Hating Game because it took place in Publishing. I liked For You and Only You (You book #4) because it was about writers. And How Can I Help You took place in a library, which is another fun book related setting.

If you like thrillers, this is a fun one because it takes place in the work place between two female coworkers. Neither of them is sure about the other one in the beginning. And as their story progresses, their pasts become more clear.

xo Marian

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