Book Lovers

by Emily Henry

Genres: Romance
Pages: 377
Rating:

Synopsis:

Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky 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.

Emily Henry’s Book Lovers starts with a fun idea: let’s follow the woman in the big city who gets left behind in romance novels by the guy who goes to a rural area and falls in love with a local farmer/bookseller/cafe owner/etc. The woman who’s kind of uptight, not in tune with nature, etc, etc. That’s Nora, and this is her turn for a romance, as her sister drags her off on a trip to a rural town that’s featured in one of the books she agented.

The story has sympathy for Nora, for the people who love the big city and prioritise their careers, and tries to peel back the layers and show us why they might act that way in the stories, what’s important to them, and, yep, how they might get their own happy ending. Nora’s not the typical romance heroine (in terms of tropes, anyway), and Charlie (the love interest) is equally not the typical romance hero.

That said, it is a romance and it follows the usual patterns and, in its way, is quite predictable even as it bucks one particular trend. That’s not a bad thing: it keeps up the contract with the reader that you expect when you’re getting a romance novel — but the constraint of the genre meant things didn’t come as a huge surprise to me.

I enjoyed Nora’s character, and the inevitable quirky side characters, though I’d have liked to understand Charlie’s attraction to her better. Overall, a fun one.

Rating: 3/5