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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
Fun story and I enjoyed the trivia and book and movie references
Sometimes, as it turns out, I finish a book purely out of spite so that I can leave a scathing review.
I thought I was sure to like this book. It’s about a woman who works at a bookstore! It’s a romcom! She loves trivia! What’s not to like?
As it turns out, most of it. There were a few nice moments near the end reflecting on courage and regret, a few sweet comments about little girls who love books and the havoc that adolescence wreaks. But mostly this book irritated me profoundly and had me rolling my eyes again and again. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t at all funny. And it wasn’t nearly, nearly as clever as it thought it was.
Its major faults, in order of importance.
A) The narrative voice. Unlike many romance novels, which tend to stick to the perspective of one to two characters, this novel has a sort of floating meta narrator who is very, very precious and thinks herself very clever. She floats in and out of characters’ heads. She quips about Los Angeles. She goes on long, cutesy digressions which start fun and becoming distracting and annoying as the story progresses. Between the floating “witty” narrator, and the enemies-to-lovers plot (barely, as I’ll get to in a moment), and the outright reference to Pride and Prejudice at the beginning, I’m assuming that this was an attempt at mimicking Austen’s free indirect discourse. But madam - you are no Jane Austen.
B) These characters don’t feel like real people. Everyone in this novel is ~quirky~ and ~quippy~ (they’re not witty - they just all reference a few pop culture properties repeatedly) and so similar to Nina. She is inconsistent - she has anxiety except when she doesn’t, she’s shy and anxious but also snarky as the plot requires, she’s open to spontaneity (lunch with her new nephew!) but when a guy she likes asks her out suddenly she’s pathological incapable of making plans outside of what’s in her planner. As a protagonist, Nina is neither likable nor believable. She may, however, have dementia, because with no explanation or preamble, her cat Phil talks. The supporting characters are equally forgettable, too numerous, and often appear once or twice before disappearing, never to be seen again.
B-1) sub rant. I do like books about books, but I am getting tired of characters whose defining characteristic is that they like books. Especially when they don’t have anything particularly interesting to say about said books, or when “liking books” and “being an introvert” and “being a lonely socially awkward weirdo” are treated as synonymous. Believe it or not, there are extroverts who love to read. Relatedly, as someone who has been on a winning trivia team, it’s not a normal trivia-lover’s characteristic to just recite trivia facts at random in otherwise standard conversations like a malfunctioning Siri unit reading Wikipedia.
C) This was marketed as a romance. It is neither romantic nor even particularly focused on the love story. Tom is a bland, flat character, these characters never exhibit any symptom of chemistry, good banter, or even sexual desire, and their happy ending is neither earned nor believable. Say what you will for many of the romances I complain about, but at least they’re sexy. This is flat as anything.
D) It’s very straight, absurdly white, and occasionally ableist and fat-phobic and weirdly lighthearted about poverty and colonialism in “cute” ways.
E) This should be the least important thing but oddly it’s the most egregious to me. If you’re going to write “smart,” “bookish,” “geeky” characters, then GET IT RIGHT. The Borg and Stormtroopers are from entirely different franchises and it makes absolutely no sense that Stormtroopers would be associated with a Borg Cube. When Vonnegut said “so it goes” he was talking about mortality, not over scheduling your day. You know, things that would happen if these characters were written as three dimensional people who had actual complex thoughts about the things they were reading instead of liking to read as a personality trait.
My apologies to anyone who loved this book and saw themselves in it. I wanted to like it. I really, really did. But to paraphrase The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, an actually good book about people who love books: “That’s the problem with good books. They ruin you for the bad ones.”
I thought I was sure to like this book. It’s about a woman who works at a bookstore! It’s a romcom! She loves trivia! What’s not to like?
As it turns out, most of it. There were a few nice moments near the end reflecting on courage and regret, a few sweet comments about little girls who love books and the havoc that adolescence wreaks. But mostly this book irritated me profoundly and had me rolling my eyes again and again. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t at all funny. And it wasn’t nearly, nearly as clever as it thought it was.
Its major faults, in order of importance.
A) The narrative voice. Unlike many romance novels, which tend to stick to the perspective of one to two characters, this novel has a sort of floating meta narrator who is very, very precious and thinks herself very clever. She floats in and out of characters’ heads. She quips about Los Angeles. She goes on long, cutesy digressions which start fun and becoming distracting and annoying as the story progresses. Between the floating “witty” narrator, and the enemies-to-lovers plot (barely, as I’ll get to in a moment), and the outright reference to Pride and Prejudice at the beginning, I’m assuming that this was an attempt at mimicking Austen’s free indirect discourse. But madam - you are no Jane Austen.
B) These characters don’t feel like real people. Everyone in this novel is ~quirky~ and ~quippy~ (they’re not witty - they just all reference a few pop culture properties repeatedly) and so similar to Nina. She is inconsistent - she has anxiety except when she doesn’t, she’s shy and anxious but also snarky as the plot requires, she’s open to spontaneity (lunch with her new nephew!) but when a guy she likes asks her out suddenly she’s pathological incapable of making plans outside of what’s in her planner. As a protagonist, Nina is neither likable nor believable. She may, however, have dementia, because with no explanation or preamble, her cat Phil talks. The supporting characters are equally forgettable, too numerous, and often appear once or twice before disappearing, never to be seen again.
B-1) sub rant. I do like books about books, but I am getting tired of characters whose defining characteristic is that they like books. Especially when they don’t have anything particularly interesting to say about said books, or when “liking books” and “being an introvert” and “being a lonely socially awkward weirdo” are treated as synonymous. Believe it or not, there are extroverts who love to read. Relatedly, as someone who has been on a winning trivia team, it’s not a normal trivia-lover’s characteristic to just recite trivia facts at random in otherwise standard conversations like a malfunctioning Siri unit reading Wikipedia.
C) This was marketed as a romance. It is neither romantic nor even particularly focused on the love story. Tom is a bland, flat character, these characters never exhibit any symptom of chemistry, good banter, or even sexual desire, and their happy ending is neither earned nor believable. Say what you will for many of the romances I complain about, but at least they’re sexy. This is flat as anything.
D) It’s very straight, absurdly white, and occasionally ableist and fat-phobic and weirdly lighthearted about poverty and colonialism in “cute” ways.
E) This should be the least important thing but oddly it’s the most egregious to me. If you’re going to write “smart,” “bookish,” “geeky” characters, then GET IT RIGHT. The Borg and Stormtroopers are from entirely different franchises and it makes absolutely no sense that Stormtroopers would be associated with a Borg Cube. When Vonnegut said “so it goes” he was talking about mortality, not over scheduling your day. You know, things that would happen if these characters were written as three dimensional people who had actual complex thoughts about the things they were reading instead of liking to read as a personality trait.
My apologies to anyone who loved this book and saw themselves in it. I wanted to like it. I really, really did. But to paraphrase The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, an actually good book about people who love books: “That’s the problem with good books. They ruin you for the bad ones.”
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted
Though an overall enjoyable read, the pov and inner monologues made it confusing and difficult to get into
I'm sure some people will love this book, but I did not. It wasn't satisfying for me. I'm really disappointed to say that, though it was charming and had heart, there was little-to-no conflict, little-to-no chemistry between the MC and her love interest, and there were a lot of weird, oddly defensive-seeming comments sprinkled throughout the text (one example was when the MC said she majored in English lit, "thanks for asking") that could have and should have been edited out as it didn't feel like the right book for it.
This book absolutely spoke to my soul. That probably sounds like an overly dramatic thing to say about a lighthearted chicklit/rom-com novel that made me laugh out loud over and over, but it's true! I have so much in common with bookish, introverted, anxious Nina Hill, and the life lessons she learns are ones I am still working on myself. I loved her and the entire cast of wonderful characters, the cozy, bougie Southern California neighborhood she lives and works in, the love of books and pop culture woven so endearingly throughout the story, and the warm, satisfied feeling I was left with as the book ended.
If Abbi Waxman had written this specifically and only for me, she couldn't have done any better. Don't you love it when you find a book like that? I'm so thrilled to have discovered this author.
5 shiny, happy stars - this is going right on my Goodreads favorites list.
If Abbi Waxman had written this specifically and only for me, she couldn't have done any better. Don't you love it when you find a book like that? I'm so thrilled to have discovered this author.
5 shiny, happy stars - this is going right on my Goodreads favorites list.
Thought I had endless patience for the women-in-bookstore genre but guess not! This was like reading a book about the most boring people you know