Book Lovers by Emily Henry on May 3, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Fiction / Women
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
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“She wonders whether what comes next could ever live up to the expectations. She doesn’t know. You never can. She turns the page anyway.”
Nora Stephens’ life is books, she’s read them all, and she is not that type of heroine. Not the lucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby. Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away, with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute. If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again, in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow, what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.
Ill get my one complaint out of the way and say I think we could have safely lost fifty or so pages of family angst, which pretty much always feels like filler in romance books like this. Outside of that though, this was a hit. In addition to the usual stuff I like, I also really appreciated how the author made use of their careers. I love how this book doesn’t change Nora or punish her for being ambitious and hardworking. It’s so true that men are allowed to be obsessed with their work, whereas women who do the same are too often treated as if they have an illness. I’m glad that’s not the case here. I always hated to see powerful women tamed.
I gave this novel a four star rating. Though this was not my favorite Henry book, it was not my least favorite one either. You can’t hate a book about book lovers, read by people who love books, and loved by a book lover. 🙂