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If you’re looking for a cute romance that makes fun of itself at times and is rarely too serious, look no further than Emily Henry’s Book Lovers.
What’s it about?
If you consume a lot of Hallmark movies, you’ll be familiar with the tropes this book pokes fun at. There’s usually a big city character who visits a small town for a few weeks and finds the love of his life (who probably runs some kind of cute business). Usually, at the end, he calls his “evil” big city girlfriend back home to break it off so he can be with his true love.
Book Lovers is about that big city girlfriend who gets dumped.
Nora works for a publishing house in NYC, and she loves it. She loves the city; she loves books. The only thing she doesn’t love is how all of her boyfriends keep breaking up with her for small town chicks.
When her sister insists on taking a girls trip to a small town to find her own true romance, the only man Nora runs into is her workplace nemesis who just so happens to be in town also.
It was a fun read.
I am a huge fan of quick, witty banter and this book was full of it, much to my delight.
I also appreciated the layer with her sister, and that there was enough room to explore that dynamic also. Watching our main character learn to grow on all fronts made the story feel more full, and less focused explicitly on the romance.
Bonus points for all cutesy references to books, loving books, reading books, book stores, book tropes, and all the other wonderful bookish things we all love.
This enemies-to-lovers book doesn’t quite fall in the “insta-love” category, but it is true that the book takes place only over about a month. However – I think that’s kind of the point. The whole story is tongue-in-cheek about romcom tropes. Falling in love over the course of a vacation is one of them. So hey, I can’t fault it for that.
I did feel it was a little long for a romance novel, and the second half slowed down significantly. In my opinion, it could’ve likely been about 100 pages shorter. But, while I felt it dragged a bit in the middle and had some pacing issues overall, I had a fun time reading it.
Should you read it?
This was a light, easy, and entertaining read. This might be for you if you’re looking for an easily digestible romance that pokes fun at romcom character archetypes.
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2 responses to “Book Lovers: A light and easy read”
Love your review….This would be great to read after reading a difficult/long book. I definitely like to give my brain a break!!!
This book is definitely good for that!