How Can I Help You

No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.

That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.

When Margo has to suddenly leave her nursing job, she eventually ends up at the Carlyle Public Library, a Carnegie-built library in a small Illinois farming community. She's good at her job, even if she's not a reader, and in the library's calm embrace, she hopes to leave her past behind. Patricia spent years working on her novel, only to find that no one is willing to publish it. She decides to give up writing and fall back on her MLS degree and work as a reference librarian, changes that delight her boyfriend. What doesn't delight him is her decision to take a job hours away from their Chicago apartment, but she is secretly pleased to have a place for herself as she figures out her adjustment to a life without writing. But a lifelong show more habit is hard to break, Patricia's job is boring and before long she's fascinated by one of the other library staff, a tall woman with an air of authority, which reignites her love of writing and she imagines stories with Margo as her main character. But closely observing her, she's seeing something troubling about Margo.

This novel features two main characters, one increasingly unpleasant and the other increasingly willing to slide into gray areas in service to her curiosity. Novels that fall into that odd genre of the literary thriller often fail to deliver on plot, but Sims keeps things moving at a satisfying pace. She writes well, especially the parts told from Margo's point of view, never falling into the trap of withholding information from the reader that is known to the narrator, while maintaining a sense of tension. There are some predictable beats, but the story holds together through the end. As much as can be said about a story involving murders, this was a lot of fun. show less

What absolute unhinged sacrilegious madness. Was this written by someone in customer service who just broke their final straw? I of course love the setting of the library for this, and while the scenes were a bit repetitive having to read them from one perspective and than another multiple times, the crazy just kept building and I truly had no idea where this was headed. How dare they send it up in flames.

I thought this book would be a standard thriller, but instead the author co-opts that genre to offer something much more interesting: a character analysis of two bonkers people that explores the nature of power in "feminine" professions (nursing and librarianship) and the darker side of writing. Recommended for all libraries.

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. I went in with no expectations and no preconceptions. The characters for the most part are not likable, the plot though off-putting is totally believable, and there is no roller coaster action – yet I devoured the book in one sitting. The author and the narrators sucked me in from page one.

Anyone who reads the blurb will know that the book is about a hospital nurse, Jane, who has single-handedly cured the pains of countless suffering patients by personally dispatching them into the afterlife. She has done so in numerous hospitals because by the two-year mark in each, most of the hospital staff and administrators have more than an uncomfortable feeling of what Jolly Jane might be up to, show more dismissing her (with references?!?), until one day she gets caught red-handed. She bolts, one-step ahead of the cops, changes her hair color from blond to black, changes her name to Margo, and lands a job as a dowdy library assistant in smalltown USA, several states away.

Make no mistake, Jane/Margo’s behavior is not altruistic. She is a serial killer who gets her “satisfaction” by climbing on top of her victims, pressing her body and mouth against theirs as they lie helplessly seizing, until she inhales their last breath. The fact that she does so while working in a hospital, conveniently provides free access to medical supplies and the easy means by which to dispose of the bodies, thereafter.

Now Jane is Jolly Margo (JM), and has been working as a library assistant for two years. No one finds it particularly odd that she doesn’t read and no one seems to notice (or care) that she has no experience. Neither does anyone try to get very close to her, perhaps because they sense that a malevolent nature bubbles threateningly close to the surface, kept barely under control behind the mask of a smiling face. After two years, that old itch needs scratching and some of the annoying patrons better watch their backs!

Enter “Patreeceeyaa”(her pronunciation, not mine), a discouraged writer whose novel that she labored over for years, is now tucked in a drawer covered in rejection letters. With a degree in writing and one in library science, “Patreeceeyaa” (P), needs a break from the stifling relationship she is in and needs to find a paying job. She moves out of the flat she shared with her insignificant other, who doesn’t understand why she doesn’t give up her dream of writing (boo hoo), and devote herself to him and the boring lifestyle to which he would like her to become accustomed. P accepts the job of Reference Librarian at the same library as JM.

P can see right away that something is off with JM. JM is so cocky that once or twice she lets slip bits of info she’s been hiding and P, who is after all a Reference Librarian, figures out who JM really is in about two minutes of research, but is loathe to report her muse to authorities, lest she lose the inspiration for the book she is plotting.

At this point, things really begin to rock-n-roll, and I will not divulge another detail. Suffice it to say that JM might have met her match in P and vice versa.

Should I be embarrassed to say I enjoyed every bit this quirky novel, especially the morbid bits?

I listened to a library loan of the audio. The narrators, Maggi-Meg Reed and particularly Carlotta Brentan were very good. This was a solid 4+ star for me, but I went the extra mile because I love an author who can entertain me so completely in under 257 pages! show less

How Can I Help You is Laura Sims' new novel - and it's such a good one!

Why? Okay, let's start with the setting. The main locale is an older public library in a small town. Having worked in a public library myself, I can say that Sims has really captured every day in a public service setting. The patrons, the services offered, the telephone calls, the inappropriate use of the net in a public space, the verbal abuse, the undercurrent of violence that could erupt any time and so much more...

But what about the staff? How Can I Help You is told from Margo's point of view. She is stone. cold. dangerous. What the other staff see is "only her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm." And that's enough to sustain Margo's even keel. Until a show more new librarian named Patricia joins the staff and disrupts Margo's world. What's really in Margo's thoughts will have your skin crawling. Patricia is also given a point of view. Her inner thoughts surprised me in the beginning. As readers we know what both women are thinking. And that only serves to ramp up the tension and the fear that something bad is going to happen...

How Can I Help You is addictive, edge of your seat reading. Kudos to Sims for an such a creepy plot and such disturbing characters show less

A great listen with two very unlikeable main characters. The arrogance, the selfishness, both of them are so flawed and so realistic.

Despite the (enjoyably) unlikable characters, this captures working in a public library so well -- makes me miss working with the public and so grateful I've never worked with a murderous former nurse (that I know of).