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.