Set a couple of months after 9/11, and narrated by a young woman who was actually in one of the towers that fell, The Gallery Assistant is both an art world murder mystery and a novel about navigating a post-traumatic world.

The titular gallery assistant, Chloe Harlow, works for a family-owned art gallery in the Upper East Side. She wakes up one morning with hazy memories of having gone to a party the night before, but no idea how the night ended and how she got home. She learns the answer to the first question when she gets to work: the gallery’s hot new artist Inga Beck has just been found dead, and Chloe may have been the last person to see her alive. As Chloe struggles to piece together what happened that evening, she learns things that makes her wonder who she can trust.

This is a pretty good thriller. I enjoyed getting a glimpse into the fancy art world in NYC, and I was drawn into the mystery of who wanted Inga dead and why. Details like how art auctions work and how much a famous artist’s sketches are worth were fascinating. I also really liked the bit about how anxious the art world was about the state of their market in the wake of 9/11; with everyone so terrified, would they still bid on art? It turns out the answer is yes, which is a relief to the characters, but also could be a commentary on the state of the world. I’m not sure if I’m comforted that rich people can still care about things like art after something like 9/11, or troubled that commercialism can move on so quickly from tragedy.

I also appreciated the little details about what it was like to live in NYC post-9/11. There are a couple of scenes where Chloe’s friend Vik has to deal with racism because of his skin colour. And another scene where a transit delay causes major anxiety for Chloe and other passengers, because, what if it’s another terror attack?

I do feel that a subplot about hidden messages in Inga’s artwork could have been sharpened further. The hidden messages were useful in establishing that Inga knew she was in danger, but I wish the hidden messages actually contained important clues that Chloe had to puzzle out. Apart from one message that put Chloe on the trail of a suspect, the rest were pretty repetitive. Granted, this may be just because I enjoy puzzles in general, so with something as intriguing as hidden messages, I really want more.

The romance also lacked chemistry, and there were references to Chloe sleeping with other characters that just felt kinda random? I’m all for a sex-positive heroine, but this felt more like the literary fiction type of an active sex life, where the encounters feel more empty and perfunctory than pleasurable. The actual romance that develops does play into the plot, but ultimately feels more like a plot device than an actual relationship.

Also, and I admit this is a personal gripe, while I do appreciate the author specifying that Chloe comes home every day to feed the cat even while she’s at her boyfriend’s house for safety reasons, I wish she’d asked the boyfriend earlier on if she could bring the cat over. Being in Chloe’s apartment also puts the cat in danger, and I wish they’d thought more of his safety beyond just being fed.

Overall, this book was pretty good. I appreciated the 9/11 elements, and thought the art world mystery component was interesting. It’s just a quieter, slower-paced novel than I expected, and it quite grip me nor keep me eagerly flipping the pages as much as I’d hoped it would.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.