Book Review: "The Book of the Most Precious Substance" by Sara Gran

Sara Gran is one of those authors who I have read before. Come Closer was a fantastic read, still unforgettable to this day. Perfectly frightening with a mixture of tension and creeping dread bursting through the seams. I've been waiting to read another book by her and so, here I have The Book of the Most Precious Substance. Though it is not really much like the other novel I read by her, it is still something pretty interesting. BUT, not only does this book have quite a few wobbles, it sinks like the Titanic by the second half. It was surprising because Come Closer was such a great book.

This book starts with our rare book dealer named Lily Albrecht who is told about a book that has seemingly never really been seen by the vast majority of people. There is nothing about it online, Reddit threads involving inferior conversation is all that litters about. When the person who wanted to split a deal with her if she helped find the book winds up mugged and dead, Lily is shocked but definitely wants to find out more about what was known, or unknown. Lily then acquires what seems to be an unimportant notebook from the dead man's belongings, which was preceeded by a statement that the family probably didn't want it anyway. A mystery begins to unfold...

The author opens the book with a great amount of tension. We have book dealers who are presented as lonely and solitary figures alongside the mysterious world of unknown literature. This is something akin to a conspiracy theory as during the research, Lily almost turns up nothing. Add in the dead man and we get the beginning of a long, winding path where Lily will need to work quickly and efficiently if she wants to get her hands on it before anyone else.

But the book does take a turn of boredom. I'm not sure I was very invested in her relationship with Abel. It seemed often forced writing, overtly sexual and very obviously the stuff of dreams from a middle-aged woman rather than real, emotional companionship. I often found myself glancing at my watch, wondering when it was going to end. Then another 'handsome fictional man' entered the picture and I was made incredibly hyperaware of the docility of both protagonist and author. People who are reading this book don't want romantic side quests, they want their super-secret mystery where people talk about the occult in hushed tones. Of course Abel ended up getting early-onset dementia and the protagonist obviously made it all about herself. I just found this part insufferable and it really didn't need to be there at all. It drew too far from the gothic mystery.

As the book goes on, it is a mixed bag really. I don't think someone reading this really cares about the romantic escapades of the protagonist as she simultaneously complains about 'being poor' but dines out very, very regularly in nice cities. The second half of the book definitely proves that the protagonist is one of those whiny middle-class idiots who doesn't know when they've got it really good. Apart from that, the story goes on and becomes a mixture of 'wow this is actually very interesting' and 'what convoluted matter-of-fact random character is going to appear now?'

The cast of characters slowly gets bigger and bigger as the story slowly also becomes more predictable. By the final ten to fifteen chapters the story goes into us meeting more characters, running about cities and the atmosphere completely drops off. I was very disappointed that the final chapters of the book didn't pack the same slow-burning punch as the beginning. The ending was even more disappointing. It just didn't feel as mysterious as the beginning at all. For example: there's a part where Lily draws out some of the pictures from the book but then spills champagne on them later on, getting some form of anxiety. Talk about first world problems. It just seemed ridiculous. If you really cared that much about the notebook and the drawings, you would have kept them in at least a separate room from where you were eating and/or drinking.

All in all, I can't say this book was terrible, only that it felt like the author was trying to pack too many characters, places and situations into what is quite a short read. At about 330 pages, there's a lot of stuff that seems to be added in because the author wanted it to end in a certain way, but it kept getting thrown around. As the mysterious atmosphere dies with the rise of predictability and too much focus on badly written sexual situations, interesting in the book not only dies but definitely cannot be resurrected.