Fantasy

Book Review: The Barracks of Forgotten Pages by Sophie Dane

December 19, 2025

Synopsis:

Matthew Walker expected ledgers and lecture halls, not cryptic ciphers and gunfire. Inheriting his grandfather’s old bookstore, he discovers it was once the command post of a Cold War spy network. Now ruthless information brokers and relentless agents are after him, convinced he holds the key to secrets worth killing for. With only a grizzled regular and a stack of coded volumes to guide him, Matthew must embrace a legacy he never asked for—or become another forgotten page in history’s deadliest book.

Review:

I like me some spy mystery, and adding a bookstore and secrets hidden in books into the mix, made it even more interesting to me.

We meet Matthew, who inherits the bookstore of his grandfather without knowing why. Once he arrives, he meets the employee (a tech genius) and a long-term customer (or is he). Once he starts looking into things, he finds out, that his grandfather was more than meets the eyes and gets thrown into a wild ride.

After the first few pages I got immediately invested into our characters and they worked very well together. Give me a TV series (a movie would also be fine) and I would watch it for sure. The book could have benefited from a few more pages (which is rare of me to say) with the resolution happening a bit to quickly. There was potential to raise the stakes a bit more and keep us guessing.

Overall, an enjoyable read, that fans of that genre will enjoy with it being not too complex.

🌙 Recension: The Barracks of Forgotten Pages by Sophie Dane
📅 Release Date: September 5, 2025
📚 Genre: Spy Mystery, Thriller
📱 Read as: Kindle
💸 I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
🗣️ Language: English
📆 Pages: 264
⭐️ 4/5