Book Lovers

 By Emily Henry

Berkley     2022

377 pages     Romantic Comedy

I don’t usually choose romance novels to read. However Book Lovers was our book club choice for August. And surprisingly, I enjoyed it for the most part because it was so skillfully written. Great characters, delightful setting, and interesting plot devices. Also because it has been a best seller since it came out in May, and I was curious about it. The NPR reviewer had this to say, “Book Lovers by Emily Henry is both a tribute to and takedown of this cultural form by a star of the summer beach read. Her playful and clever contemporary romance — her third — pokes holes in many of the assumptions that surround small towns in popular culture.”

Nora Stephens, the narrator of the book, is a New Yorker through and through. She has had various love affairs, all of which have ended up disasters with Nora being dumped. Her younger sister, Libby, however, is married and expecting her third child. After their mother’s death, Nora finished raising Libby and they have an extremely close bond. Libby comes up with a suggestion that she and Nora take a vacation alone together to the small town of Sunshine Falls, just outside Asheville, North Carolina.  Nora is a book agent and knows that she will have to work while on vacation. She very soon begins to suspect that Libby’s marriage may be having trouble and that is why she wanted to leave for a while. Oh, and by the way, Sunshine Falls is the setting of the last book Nora was the agent for.

Surprisingly, when they get to a rental house high on a mountain in Sunshine Falls, Nora finds Charlie, a book editor that she has had a rather unfortunate meeting with over a book edit. What is Charlie doing in this small North Carolina town? They are very attracted to each other, and thus the plot begins.

There is a familiar trope in romance fiction that hard-edged city people go to small town America to rest and renew. Love and romance can come in quaint, lovely small towns. The Kirkus reviewer says that “Henry never falls into the easy trap of vilifying either small towns or big cities, allowing her characters the room to follow their dreams, wherever they lead.”

Book Lovers is character driven, and the reader identifies quickly with the beauty of the setting and the beauty of the love between sisters as well as the love between Nora and Charlie. The theme of the love of reading, books, and book stores runs through the entire book, including a list at the end of Nora and Libby’s best books. I was very impressed by how Henry wove everything together. I will be leaving North Carolina behind for a while—this was my second North Carolina book in a row, following the mystery The Last to Vanish.

Here's a cute article about how Emily Henry vacations and her favorite Midwestern cities, including Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Rosie Project

  by Graeme Simsion

Simon & Schuster 2013

295 pages     Fiction

Think Sheldon Cooper and the Big Bang Theory. This first novel by Aussie Graeme Simsion is a total winner. I loved every minute of it.

Don Tillman is a geneticist and a university professor, and he is definitely on the Autism spectrum. His best, and only, friends are Claudia and Gene—Gene being another professor and a terrible philanderer. Claudia is a psychologist and understands Don and his foibles. Don is an extremely appealing character with a developmental disorder but the same needs as everyone else. The only problem is that he doesn't know what he needs. His life is totally ordered, from the meals that he eats to the number of steps he takes every day. He has trouble being touched, and is not sure when he has made a joke. He learns everything he thinks he needs to know from books or websites—including learning how to dance and have sex.

When Don decides he needs a wife, he treats the issue like the researcher he is—he develops a questionnaire, a highly personalized psychometric questionnaire. He distributes his questionnaire to a variety of sources, but he is having trouble finding anyone who meets his specific needs. Then his friend Gene sends Rosie to meet him. Rosie is the exact opposite of what Don thinks he is seeking. She is messy, late, scattered, but Don begins to feel things he can't understand. She interrupts his ordered life.

 On the other hand, Rosie needs Don's expertise. She has never known who her father is, but as a geneticist, Don can help her. Together, they devise a plan to get DNA from a variety of men, all of whom were in her dead mother's medical school graduating class, one of whom Rosie thinks must be her father. This subplot stretches throughout the entire book. Their adventures gathering DNA evidence are very funny. Of course, like all romantic comedies, the book ends well, and Don and Rosie live happily ever after.

The reviewer in the New York Times said, “'The Rosie Project' is the kind of Panglossian comedy in which everything is foreordained to work out for the best. That’s not a genre that can be dismissed entirely — at least not without sacrificing P. G. Wodehouse, which no one should be prepared to do — but it’s one that doesn’t comfortably accommodate things like autism spectrum disorders."

The Rosie Project is a quick, delightful read. Reader's compare it with Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, but I believe that Mark Haddon's book takes a deeper look into life on the autism spectrum. There is a follow up book to The Rosie Project called The Rosie Effect in which the relationship between Don and Rosie moves to the next level.   

When I finished reading it, I gave it to my step-daughter who read it in one sitting on a plane ride. It's that kind of book. This posting about The Rosie Project is brief because I gave the book away before I wrote the review. It was our October book for book club, and everyone really enjoyed reading it.