"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry

"Once I fell in love with books, I fell in love completely."

~Stephen King

Nora Stephens has lived many lives through the pages of books. She grew up a reader, turned into an agent with a publishing house. She knows a good story when she sees one. She also knows how most stories end; with the guy getting the girl, the girl getting the guy, and they sail off into the sunset.

However, Nora is not the girl who ends up getting the guy in the end. Nora is the girl who is married to her job in the big city, not married to the big hunk in the small town. And that's okay with her. Her carefully curated life is what she lives for. The escape books give her only strengthen her resolve to continue to be married to her job. Who wants an ending they've heard a million times before?

But little does Nora know, a month-long vacation in a small town in North Carolina orchestrated by her pregnant sister, Libby, will lead to her own story being rewritten and covered with red ink long before the story is over.

While I am not a romance reader, I kept seeing Emily Henry's "Book Lovers" everywhere. What book-lover does not daydream about finding their own partner who adores books as much as they do? But like I said, I am far from a romance reader. I opted out many, many, many, many times. However, I bit the bullet and decided to try my luck at a modern-day romance.

And I was not disappointed. Henry's writing draws you in and with the sprinkling of small-town romance throughout, especially the enemies-to-lovers trope, the detail to descriptions, and characters who are as raw and unedited and messy as real people, "Book Lovers" was a read I didn't expect to like, and ended up loving.

There were parts where Nora's insistence on control was overbearing and overwhelming. I felt like they were stressed to the extreme in certain parts and that she was made to, in all honesty, be the city shark misplaced in a small town and be the villain of the story. And maybe, she was at first. But as time went on, she kept the shark in her (who changes for a man?) but she allowed others in to help when her world felt like it was falling apart.

"Book Lovers" was an interesting toe-dip in the waters of romance and the squealing and giggling I did at certain parts of the book (that elicited my own strange looks from my partner) probably sums up my feelings about the romance part.....

Favorite Quotes

1. "Or maybe, Nora Stephens, I can read you like a book." (Pg. 86)

2. "'I wasn't aware you had a checklist,' I say. 'Of course I have a checklist.' His eyes glint in the dark. 'What am I, an animal?'"

3. "'And by you've seen me,' I say, 'you mean you've watched me.' 'Of course I do,' he says in a low, rough voice. 'I can't stop. I'm always aware of where you are, even if I don't look, but it's impossible not to. I want to see your face get stern when you're emailing a client's editor, being a hard-ass, and I want to see your legs when you're so excited about something you just read that you can't stop crossing and uncrossing them. And when someone pisses you off, you get these red splotches.' His fingers brush my throat. 'Right here.'"

4. "'We're going to do this right. No shortcuts.'"

5. "The future will be the present, and this will become the past. But not yet."

6. "I open to him, knowing how it will feel when I turn the page but unwilling not to turn it at all."

For More Romance Reviews, Check Out:

"The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

"They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silva

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