bookish books

This Book Made Me Think of You

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by Libby Page
First sentence: “The right book in the hands of the right person at exactly the right moment can change their life forever.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: February 3, 2026
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is swearing, including a few f-bombs, and talk of death and dying. It will be in the Romance section (though it could go in general fiction) of the bookstore.

Tilly Nightingale has been going through the motions of life in the six months since her husband passed. Then, out of the blue, she gets a call from a local bookshop: her dead husband left her a present. One book per month for the next year. Thus begins a year of grief and healing, of learning to live again, and of figuring out how to hold space for grief and joy at the same time. And the catalyst? Books, of course. All the books you need to learn and grow and heal and experience life.

Of course, there is a charming bookseller – Alfie – and a best friend and a sister who are part of Tilly’s life. There are misunderstandings and fights, and joyful and silly moments. It’s a sweeping book, covering Tilly’s life over the year.

And while I adore bookish books about books and book people, this one felt, well, surface. I wanted something deeper. I wanted more emotion. I wanted to want to cry when Tilly finally spread her husband’s ashes. I wanted to rejoice when she and Alfie got together. I wanted to feel, and I just never did. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, reading this on the plane, but I’m thinking that Page just told more than showed the emotions of the characters. So, I never really connected. I liked this book on an intellectual level, but emotionally, it just wasn’t there.

Which is too bad, because it’s a charming idea for a book.

Overdue

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by Stephanie Perkins
First sentence: “I had already made one catastrophic decision earlier that week.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some fade-to-black sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ingrid has been in a long-term relationship with Cory since she was 18. Eleven years later, they’ve not made any moves toward marriage, and when Ingrid’s younger sister announces her engagement, they have a panic attack. And decide to “take a break” for a month to date other people. Ingrid’s first choice: her co-worker from the library, Macon. Except that doesn’t go well. And as one month turns into two, into three, Ingrid realizes that maybe more than just her relationship needs an overhaul. Over the next year, she does just that, finding out more about herself, her wants and desires, and making her life into one she wants to live.

This one had a rough start. It’s divided up by months, and January was painful. Ingrid isn’t likable, the whole situation with Cory is awkward, and it’s just, well, hard to read. But, I pushed through it because I adored Stephanie Perkins back in the day, and I was rewarded: the book got immensely better. It’s a slow-burn romance, which I don’t usually care for, but I did like the way Macon and Ingrid’s romance developed. I liked that the book was as much about Ingrid finding herself as it was about falling in love. I liked the town that Perkins invented, and the people she surrounded Ingrid with. It was all very homey and sweet and, in the end, quite enjoyable. If it had a less rough start, I’d probably like it more, but it’s a worthy adult debut for a YA author I really like.

Novel Love Story

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by Ashley Poston
First sentence: “There once was a town.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: June 25, 2024
ARC most likely sent to me by the publisher rep, because he’s awesome that way.
Content: There is some swearing, including a few f-bombs, and some off-screen sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Eileen (side note: one of the joys in this book is the number of times there’s a “come on, Eileen” joke. I loved it!) is an adjunct English professor who not-so-secretly loves romance books. Specifically the Eloraton series by Rachel Flowers. It has seen her through good times, and bad – including a recent breakup that was devastating. She and her best friend Prudence are part of an online book club devoted to reading romance and they meet once a year in a cabin in the Hudson Valley to read and talk and drink wine. Except the only person who can go this year is Eileen. So, she heads north from Atlanta in her 1979 Pinto… and gets lost in a rainstorm once she gets to New York. Where she accidentally almost hits a man in the road and wakes up… in Eloraton.

Her car won’t start, and she has no cell service, so she’s stuck for a few days in a fictional town, with a guy – Anders – who also knows that the town is fictional.

That’s the premise – but the heart of the story is deeper than that. It’s about the power books have in our lives, the way characters can feel real, and letting go when it’s time, and embracing change. It’s about books and stories and community and connection.

And I adored it. (Of course!) It’s not as spicy as Seven Year Slip, but it’s sweet. And at its heart, it’s about Eileen learning to embrace love again. It’s about how love is important but maybe friendships are more important. It’s about grief and loss and moving on. But there are also some dreamy kisses and a grumpy-sunshine trope that made me smile (though I never could quite picture Anders with the blonde hair he was supposed to have).

It’s an absolute delight of a novel.

The Spellshop

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by Sarah Beth Durst
First sentence: “Kiela never thought the flames would reach the library.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
ARC provided by the publisher.
Release date: July 9, 2024
Content: There are some intense moments. It will be in the SciFi/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Kiela was content with her job as a librarian in the stacks of the Great Library of Alyssium. She and her sentient spider plant assistant, Caz, don’t interact with many people but who needs people when you can organize books? Then, when a rebellion sweeps through the city, the library is set ablaze, and Kiela finds herself taking a bunch of spell books and heading toward her parents’ home on the island of Caltrey. Once there, she realizes she needs to hide – she stole books from the library, and regular citizens aren’t supposed to have access to spells! – and so she decides to open a jam shop as a cover. But then, she meets other islanders and makes friends, and ends up finding a place where she belongs after all.

File this one under “delightful books where not much happens”, though there is the conflict of hiding the books from the other islanders and the looming problem of what if They realize that the books are missing (which is kind of borne out by the end, in a very satisfying way). But, mostly, it’s Kiela and Caz making a home for themselves (and yes, there is a romance with a neighbor, who also has a herd of merhorses) and blooming where they’re planted (pun not intended). I haven’t read one of Durst’s books in a while, but it was delightful to go back to her books. She’s a talented storyteller, someone who knows how to develop characters and a world that feels real. She writes in the afterword that she wanted to create a book that feels like a cozy cup of hot chocolate, and I think she succeeded. It’s a warm delight of a book that I think will make a lot of readers happy.

Audiobook: Bookish People

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by Susan Coll
Read by Alexa Morden
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some mild swearing and a couple of f-bombs. There is also mention of suicide. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

A co-worker – the current Children’s Coordinator at the bookstore – turned me on to this one, saying: It’s super accurate, including down to the vacuum cleaner that won’t work. That was enough for me.

The basic plot: it’s one week at an independent bookstore in Washington, DC (not Politics and Prose, though) where everything seems to go wrong. The owner, Sophie, is having second and third thoughts about running a bookstore and just wants to hide away in the hidden room behind the sports section (I think?). Clemi, the event coordinator, has booked Raymond Chaucer, a notorious poet who is basically known because his wife killed herself. Clemi, however, thinks Chaucer is her real father. In between all that is a lot of rain, some pretty weird and funny customers, and a vacuum cleaner that just won’t work.

it’s particularly silly and fluffy; there’s really not much depth or growth here But the author must have some experience with working at a bookstore; there was a lot of insider baseball from Shelf Awareness (which is more like an industry newsletter, not a blog) to receiving and stocking books (though they order a LOT of books) to those weird customers who show up at author events. In fact, it was the author event, where one attendee just started rambling about spotted owls, that had me howling in laughter. I know those people; I have had those people at events I have run.

The narrator was particularly delightful and engaging, doing voices (I particularly liked her voice for Summer), and basically keeping me engrossed in an increasingly silly plot.

So, not a deep or moving book, but it was good for a few laughs, which I enjoyed.

Audio book: Fox and I

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by Catherine Raven
Read by Stacey Glemboski
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen on Libro.fm
Content: There’s some intense moments. It’s in the biography section of the bookstore.

Catherine is a biologist by education, but mostly she’s a naturalist: she enjoys being in nature, having worked as a park ranger and currently lives mostly off the grid outside of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. The book is basically a memoir of her life, but more its more than that: it’s a reflection on our relationship with nature, and whether or not it’s “appropriate” to befriend a wild animal. In her case, a wild fox.

This is an odd book, reminding me very strongly of Lab Girl. Raven struggles with her feelings of friendship towards something that “supposed to” be an object of her study. It’s most interesting when she”s analyzing literature — most notably Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and The Little Prince — or maybe that’s what I found most interesting. Even with it’s oddness, I found the story compelling possibly because the narrator is really good. She kept the book interesting and entertaining in spite of its oddness.

Not my most favorite book this year, but an interesting one.

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 1, Volume 1

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by Miya Kazuki and Suzuka
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Aside from it being a manga, which is kind of tricky to learn to read, there’s nothing. It’s in the manga section of the graphic novel section of the bookstore.

Urano is a college student who loves books. Loves them so much that she surrounds herself with them. And, unfortunately, that is her downfall: she dies in a book-related accident. And then wakes up, reincarnated into 5 year old Myne, as a peasant in a world with a low literacy rate. It becomes Urano/Myne’s goal to find a book, and when she can’t find one, to make one.

My youngest told me that I would really like this manga series, and she’s right: it’s bookish, it’s cute, it’s fun. And unlike other isekai manga, this one is centered on a girl with a goal is really quite fun. I adored the fish-out-of-water aspect as Urano tries to figure out how to operate in this new world and body. And her focus on inding and then making a book is completely relatable.

So, yes, I have picked up the next few volumes of this one. I have found a magna that I like!

Dear Fahrenheit 451

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by Annie Spence
First sentence: “Dear Reader, Welcome to Dear Fahrenheit 451.“
Support your local indpendent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is some mild swearing and about a half-dozen f-bombs. It’s in the Literary Reference section of the bookstore.

This is really exactly what the cover says it is: a series of letters that Spence, a librarian in a suburb of Detroit, wrote to a bunch of different books. Some are to ones she loves, some to ones she’s weeded from the library (“The One-Hour Orgasm” is the best one of these), some about books she’d recommend to people (like her husband, a non-reader). I can tell, from reading the book, that she and I absolutely do not have the same taste in books. That said, it was still entertaining reading her little notes to the books. (That said, I skipped all the reading lists in the back for that exact reason.)

It’s not deep, but it is fun. And especially good for bookish readers.

Twenty-One Truths About Love

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by Matthew Dicks
First sentence: “Ways to keep Jill from getting pregnant”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: November 19, 2019
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It will be in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

10 Reasons you should read this book
1. It’s told in lists. Seriously
2. And yet, there’s a plot with character development.
3. Which is really quite brilliant, if you think about it
4. It’s about a not-quite 40-something man stressing about his life.
5. Which sounds boring, but really isn’t because of the lists.
6. They range from “books of the month” — Dan, the main character owns a bookstore — to “Songs you would think have great lyrics but don’t”.
7. It’s charming and sweet and funny but isn’t all happiness and roses.
8. And about being honest with your spouse and how having friends is important.
9. And maybe a little bit about forgiveness.
10. But really, it’s that it’s told through lists that makes it so incredibly unique and worth spending your time on.

I loved it.

The Bookwanderers

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by Anna James
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s not long and it doesn’t have a lot of hard words, though it does seem to lean in to bookish kids, even if one of the characters has a hard time reading because he’s dyslexic. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Tilly has grown up in her grandparents’ bookstore, Pages & Co. (a quick real-life interjection here: they have a bakery and a store, but no evidence of customers? How are they paying the bills? I know, I know, it’s a kids’ book…) surrounded by books. She is an avid reader, partially because you can’t grow up in a bookstore and not be and partially because it’s a connection to her mother, who disappeared when Tilly was little.

And now that she’s 11, something unusual has started happening: characters are coming out of books. And she’s been pulled into them, not just metaphorically, but literally. It turns out that her grandparents and mother are part of this group called Bookwanderers, people who can literally travel between the pages of a book. And now, Tilly and her friend Oskar find they can travel in books too, which means, maybe that’s where Tilly’s mother went? And maybe they can find her.

On the one hand, this is super charming. I was charmed by the presentation, by the idea of taking something metaphorical (getting lost in a book) and making it literal. I liked Tilly and her willingness to take chances, even though she had a good support system with her parents. I liked that it wrapped the story up, but also left a thread open for more books in the series.

But. I’m not sure how much kids are going to like it. (Which makes me sad.) Because of copyright issues, James can only use the classics, which makes sense, but I’m sure that kids would much rather read about falling into books they love, and not Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, and A Little Princess. It makes sense why she used the classics, but it is a drawback, and one I’m not sure many readers could get past. Which means it’s more for adults who love reading and have a fond memory of reading as a kid, and that’s kind of sad.

Even so, I was happy I read it!