The Library of Borrowed Hearts by Lucy Gilmore on April 30, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Coming of Age, Fiction / Friendship, Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Small Town & Rural, Fiction / Women
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
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This is the book you want to hug when you’re done reading it. This has a little of everything: book about books, romance, mystery, and dual time lines.
This one starts out with librarian Chloe Sampson and her struggles as she is now raising her siblings. Her mom left and she was informed that there wasn’t as adult at their house for weeks. Trixie, Theo and Noodle were left in the care of Chloe. One day as she is worrying about her various credit card bills and kids school bills, she comes across a book in the basement of the library while helping clean out old books. She finds a rare edition of a banned 1960’s book and thinks it might be worth something. She sneaks it home to check it out. She discovers their is writing in it and sets out to find out more about it.
Next door is Jasper, the cranky old neighbor guy who collects frisbees and balls that are discarded accidentally over the fence. There are stories circulating that he has dead bodies buried in his flower garden. But when Jasper offers to buy the rare book for a high price, Chloe wonders if he is one of the ones that was writing secret love messages in the margins of the book. Chloe searches and finds other books with secret margin messages.
The story also goes back to how Jasper and this mystery woman met. And what her connection to the library was.
In the meantime, Noodle runs off after an upsetting event at school and gets hurt and found by handsome Zack, who offers to help Chloe on her book search.
I don’t want to say much more and give away any of the good, juicy details, but this one had some drama! I just loved the characters in this one. I got invested in the story and had to race through this to know what was going to happen and how everything was connected. There was a surprise connection that I didn’t see until the end that I just loved. This one is for those who enjoy young love, unexpected friendship, dual timelines, and mystery type books. I had such a book hangover after this one.