The book that won several people fame? Also sounded awful.

The book being edited and drooled over by the agent/editor just sounded awful. Except in this instance, Henry does let you see glimpses of the writing and of the plot of the amazing, fictitious books in question, but you remain, or I remained, unimpressed. It reminded me of movies where they talk about great art or a beautiful person or something, and they make such a big deal about it, but then the viewer never gets to see the beautiful person or the great art. And on most of that, it didn’t work for me. However, it fell short by 1) being of maybe not the highest caliber of writing and 2) trying so hard to sell me on this editing world when FOR PITY’S SAKE THERE WERE A NUMBER OF SPELLING AND GRAMMATICAL ERRORS! Yes, Book Lovers is meant to hook book lovers with its taking place in the New York editing world, complete with authors and book stores galore, but this brings with it so many expectations. In other words, it was preaching to the choir but the choir was like, “Can you give me a scriptural reference for that, please?” As for Book Lovers, it was entertaining and engaging and once again, I couldn’t put it down and basically devoured it. I wasn’t mad I had read it, it just really didn’t pan out and I felt that part of the reason was because Fikry was all book-snob but his references and recommendations didn’t say “book snob” to me. I read it on a recommend but didn’t end up liking it. Fikry is a book about book lovers and all things bookish. I knew it was not the highest-minded literature I had ever read, but it was so engaging and entertaining. I could not put the darn thing down and I devoured it. Song of Achilles was a book I picked up at a local bookstore while out of town, somewhat impulsively. Let’s assume you do not remember everything I said in both those reviews. But then it also went a lot like me reading Song of Achilleswhile at a residency last fall. It went very much like the reading of The Storied Life of A. Maybe I could use a painless read as a break from the bears (good bears) that I am in the middle of.

I’m not done with like three other books. And the lady at Malaprop’s recommends it. The cover looks light, beach-read-y, like a regular, ol’ romance. Well, I’m a book person, and I approached Book Lovers by Emily Henry with some reservations. Maybe the majority of book people aren’t that discerning, and writing a book about book people is an obvious sell. I mean, when you’re going to write a book about books and book people, you’re asking for trouble.

Book lovers book review