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A review by erboe501
The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler
2.0
A (nauseatingly) besotted English grad student struggles with romance and pregnancy while working at a charmingly quirky secondhand bookstore in NYC.
The protagonist's name should give you a hint of the melodrama that permeates this novel. Esme Garland? Are we talking about some sentimental Hollywood starlet? I can't enjoy a story that has such an obviously misguided protagonist. She's so naive, going back to her boyfriend/fiance Mitchell whenever he shows the slightest interest. Mitchell himself wasn't a very believable character. His actions did not seem to make a very convincing character portrait. He was all over the place. I'm surprised there wasn't more closure at the ending of the novel. I had assumed Esme would end up with Luke, but Meyler merely left a suggestion of the future. I loved Esme's many literary allusions.
The narrator's voices on this audiobook were at times confusing. Many of the characters started to sound the same. The breaks weren't always evident. A good choice for a long road trip because it didn't take much concentration, except for the parts where Esme would go off on a tangent and left me wondering where we were on the timeline of events.
The protagonist's name should give you a hint of the melodrama that permeates this novel. Esme Garland? Are we talking about some sentimental Hollywood starlet? I can't enjoy a story that has such an obviously misguided protagonist. She's so naive, going back to her boyfriend/fiance Mitchell whenever he shows the slightest interest. Mitchell himself wasn't a very believable character. His actions did not seem to make a very convincing character portrait. He was all over the place. I'm surprised there wasn't more closure at the ending of the novel. I had assumed Esme would end up with Luke, but Meyler merely left a suggestion of the future. I loved Esme's many literary allusions.
The narrator's voices on this audiobook were at times confusing. Many of the characters started to sound the same. The breaks weren't always evident. A good choice for a long road trip because it didn't take much concentration, except for the parts where Esme would go off on a tangent and left me wondering where we were on the timeline of events.