Book Lovers
Book Lovers
By: Emily Henry
[Winner for ‘Best Romance’ category of the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]
“There is always fear. Fear of the money running out again. Of hunger. Of failure. Of wanting anything badly enough that it will destroy me when I can’t have it. Of loving someone I can’t hold on to, of watching my sister slip through my fingers like sand. Of watching something break that I don’t know how to fix.”
I mean… was I ever NOT going to read a book called ‘Book Lovers’?
You know how the Hallmark movies are typically just versions of: ‘Big-city-career-driven-person visits small town for some reason, falls in love with a simple-life-local, breaks up with city-lover to move to said small town and find the more important things in life.’ ?
Well this is about the ‘city-lover’ who was broken up with.
Nora.
She’s been the one left behind in New York for the small town magic. Four times.
Nora has accepted that she is the ice-queen with no feelings, destined to be alone, but doesn’t mind because she only cares to be successful in her career (in books) and be there for her younger sister.
What I love most about this rom-com is that it’s more than just a funny love story. It’s also a story of the friendship of sisters and the process of grief.
And even though I can’t really understand people who love to live in New York City and view the millions of other people as family, I can respect that Emily Henry allowed her character to not follow the norm and let the busy-ness and crowdedness of the city to be a good thing.
Plot Summary
Nora is a literary agent, the liaison between authors and editors.
Her and her sister’s father left them when they were young. Their mom died when her sister, Libby, was in high school. So Nora has been Libby’s primary ‘caretaker,’ vowing to do whatever she could to protect and help Libby, to give Libby the life their mother had started to create for them in New York.
“I put my career first. Not because I have no life, but because I can’t bear to let the one Mom wanted for us to slip away. Because I need to know we’ll be okay no matter what, because I want to carve out a piece of the city and its magic, just for us. But carving turns you into a knife. Cold, hard, sharp, at least on the outside.”
As adults their sister bond has weakened so Nora agrees to take a few weeks off and go on a trip Libby planned for them to small town Sunshine Falls, NC— the inspiration for her latest client’s successful book.
[FYI- Sunshine Falls, NC is not a real place but was based on several small mountain towns.]
“Why Sunshine Falls? It just seemed like the kind of place that might look one way on the outside, and be something totally different once you got to know it. Like if you had the patience to take the time to understand it, it might be something beautiful.”
The catch? Libby has a bucket list for the trip. And it looks a lot like a Hallmark movie: wear flannel, sleep under the stars, ride a horse, get a makeover, go on dates with the locals, save a small business, etc.
This would normally be fine. She’ll do anything for Libby.
But lo and behold, she runs into Charlie Lastra— an editor she had a less than ideal experience with a couple years ago.
So now we have an enemies-to-lovers scenario. Their back and forth passive-aggressive banter quickly turns into flirting and something more. They have to figure out if what they feel is merely the small town magic or if they can survive in the city.
Things I Liked
The humor. At this point I have read one other Emily Henry book— People We Meet on Vacation. She has a great sense of humor and a knack for wit and entertaining dialogue.
Even her descriptions are funny and creative. Like:
“‘This book feels like someone watched that Sarah McLachlan commercial for animal cruelty prevention and thought, But what if all the puppies died on camera?’”
“This place looks like a Cracker Barrel had a baby with a honkytonk, and now that baby is a teenager who doesn’t shower enough and chews on his sweatshirt sleeves.”
I really liked the focus on other relationships besides just the love story. Nora is still dealing with her grief from losing her mom and realizing the pressure she’s put on herself to take care of Libby.
Something her mom always said to them when they felt sad was, ‘Let it out, sweet girl.’ And for some reason that phrase ‘sweet girl’ pulls at my heartstrings. I like when female characters have close relationships with their moms.
Nora also wasn’t going to put her own love life above helping her sister. I liked that we see growth in multiple types of relationships throughout the book.
I liked getting to see a little piece of the editing process a book goes through before being published. Although, now I’m wondering how much of my favorite books were actually characters, plots, or words that were written by an editor not the author.
And if I end up writing my own book like I want to, can I handle a process like that?
I wish it was possible to shadow an editor at a publishing company and see more about how these things work!
Lastly, there were some references that were fun:
There was a salon called ‘Curl Up N Dye’ which is funny because literally a week ago I was driving through a small town in Iowa with a salon with that exact name and I couldn’t decide if that was a smart name or not!
She makes a brief reference to Countess Bathory. She was rumored to have been a murderer of young girls back in the late 1500s. If this intrigues you, Tosca Lee wrote a really good duology incorporating that legend.
There is a cologne called ‘Books’ that is scented like cedar wood and amber and I am now looking for a candle with that scent combo because I think I’ll really like it.
Things I Didn’t Like
Her name is Nora. Like a million other books. Let’s try something different.
The sexual content.
I know, it’s a romance novel, what do I expect? Well I’m one of the few who don’t like to read the details about people having sex or almost sex.
To Henry’s credit, there was not as much as Love, Hypothetically, but there were still a few scenes I could have done without.
If you wish to avoid them, just skip pages 170-174, 244-247, and 302-307. You won’t miss anything important and you’ll still be able to see the romance and tension between Nora and Charlie.
That Libby calls Nora ‘sissy.’ Do adults use this term? I don’t even have my daughters call each other that, but it just seems childish for adults. I can’t really picture this nickname being natural as an adult. But that could just be me.
Charlie says he doesn’t like to read the last page of a book:
“There are full series I love whose last chapter I’ve never read. I hate the feeling of something ending.”
What?! That’s a romantic notion but seriously? What book lover could really not finish a book they love? They could really live like that?
There is a bit of a story-within-a-story in this book because Charlie and Nora are co-editing a book and so we get bits and pieces of the characters and plots of the book. The main character of that book is named Nadine Winters and based on Nora.
I think this was supposed to be a profound addition and a subtle way to understand the self-realization that Nora goes through, but it didn’t really do much for me. I don’t think I really followed everything and I don’t think it added that much to the story.
Recommendation
I think this book earned its win as Best Romance. I think there were a lot of layers to it that added some depth to the plot.
It was definitely funny and fun to read.
I think the main thing that keeps this from being a five star book for me is just the swearing and sexual content.
I feel like most of the f-words occurred in the last third of the book. And the sexual content can largely/easily be avoided by skipping the pages I listed above.
I’m realizing it’s hard for me to pick and choose romance books and recommend them. There’s a wide spectrum of what kind of content is in them.
It seems these days there aren’t many romance novels without language and sexual content unless they are Amish or Christian novels that don’t stand out to me.
This is not my go-to genre but I’m drawn to rom coms— I love to laugh and enjoy good wit and humor.
I’m still trying to figure out how to recommend these books because others have different thresholds for this content as well.
So I’ll just say this:
If you have the self-control to skip some pages and can handle some language, I would definitely recommend this book!
If you prefer to only read clean books with no f-words, better skip this one.
[Content Advisory: a few handfuls of f- and s-words; somewhat graphic sexual content in pages 170-174, 244-247, and 302-307]
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