Book of Night

Book of Night (2022) is a dark fantasy novel by American author Holly Black. Black is best known for her YA fiction; Book of Night marks her adult debut. The novel draws on the crime and thriller genres and uses a speculative lens to examine the real-world impact of dangerous wellness trends and class divides.

This study guide is for the 2022 hardcover edition from Penguin RandomHouse.

Content Warning: This novel contains references to self-harm, domestic abuse, and intense violence.

Plot Summary

Charlie Hall is a bartender and former con artist. She lives in a world in which shadows can be magically altered into different shapes, enhanced to influence emotions, or even brought to life. One night, she leaves work to see that a bar patron named Paul Ecco was murdered for trying to fence pages from a powerful stolen book.

Unable to resist, Charlie looks into the murder and attracts the attention of a gloamist, or shadow magician. When the gloamist attacks Charlie in her bar, she is rescued by her boyfriend, Vince, who displays an unexpected propensity for violence. Suspicious, Charlie digs through Vince’s things and learns that his real name is Edmund Carver. They argue about his past, and Vince leaves.

Meanwhile, a woman named Doreen hires Charlie to find her missing boyfriend, Adam. Charlie follows Adam to his hotel and steals a notebook, which he stole from a gloamist named Knight Singh.

Soon after, a dangerous man from Charlie’s past named Lionel Salt offers her a job: He wants her to steal a volume called Liber Noctem, or Book of Night. The book is supposed to contain a ritual for turning a shadow into a living human. Salt wants it returned by the time he joins a powerful group of magicians called the Cabal. Charlie begins her hunt for the book but is sidelined by a run-in with Adam; he takes revenge on her for stealing his notebook by beating her up. Charlie learns that her shadow is “quickening,” or coming to life, to the disappointment of her sister Posey.

The night of a party that Salt is throwing for the Cabal, Charlie breaks in dressed as a caterer and opens Salt’s safe, where she finds the Book of Night. She realizes it was never stolen to begin with. Salt has been using the book as an illusion to maintain control of a shadow in his service who wants to become human. Charlie also finds Vince held captive and learns that he’s the shadow of the real Edmund Carver, who was killed by Salt years ago.

Charlie confronts Salt in front of his friends and proves that he faked the high-profile theft. In the confusion, the captive shadow’s host body is killed and the shadow is set free. He and Vince fight, while Charlie and Salt fight. Charlie defeats Salt by setting free Salt’s own shadow, which turns on him. Although they are victorious, the Cabal imprisons Vince. They decide to bind him to Salt’s daughter Adeline to keep him controlled. Charlie convinces them to bind Vince to her instead, and she joins the Cabal. Once they’re joined, however, Charlie is horrified to find that Vince has lost all his memories of her.