Book Review: Book Lovers

There was a lot of hype around Emily Henry’s Book Lovers last year. I spent the past couple days reading it and it definitely lived up to the hype for me.

The novel follows 32-year old Nora Stephens, a literary agent. Nora loves her job, books, and her sister. She didn’t have the easiest childhood with her mother being a struggling actress, but she was happy. 10 years ago when her mother died unexpectedly, her role as big sister became even more important to her. Now her sister, Libby, is married with children – a 3rd on the way – and she wants Nora to stop working so hard, stop taking care of everyone else all the time, and live her life. That includes finding love event hough Nora believes she’s cursed since she’s had a string of ex-boyfriends leave her in comical ways resembling a Hallmark movie i.e. a boyfriend who went away for business only to fall in love with the innkeeper’s daughter and so on.

A few years ago Nora’s oldest client wrote a hit novel that took place in a small town called Sunshine Hills in North Carolina. Libby convinces Nora to spend a month down there with her in a rental house so they can have some quality sister time during Nora’s slow month at work before the baby comes. Soon after arriving in the small town, she runs into Charlie Lastra, an editor she hasn’t always gotten along with back in New York. As the two spend more time together she realizes what she mistook as brusqueness and a chilly personality was actually Charlie being straightforward, thoughtful, and honest.

Can this small town help Nora and Libby get back into their sister rhythm after feeling disconnected for the past few months? Will her new found feelings for her one time work enemy continue when she’s back home in New York?

I loved this novel. The characters were all so good and although they weren’t perfect, they felt real and relatable, and I didn’t dislike any of them – in fact I loved them deep in my heart. I loved seeing Nora and Charlie go from not really liking each other to being the ones who understood each other the most. Their banter was funny, but also their conversations were real and meaningful. I laughed, I cried. It made my heart both ache and happy. It was all the things!

“If I had to pick one person to be in my corner, it’d be you. Every time.”