The Book Wench

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. But mainly because Joe died five months ago….

When she goes to pick up the present, Alfie, the bookshop owner with kind eyes, explains the gift—twelve carefully chosen books with handwritten letters from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him.

At first Tilly can’t imagine sinking into a fictional world, but Joe’s tender words convince her to try, and something remarkable happens—Tilly becomes immersed in the pages, and a new chapter begins to unfold in her own life. Monthly trips to the bookstore—and heartfelt conversations with Alfie—give Tilly the comfort she craves and the courage to set out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to share her journey with others, her story—like a book—becomes more than her own.

I had such high, high hopes for this novel when I first heard about it. The premise is precious and who doesn’t love a good book about books? Unfortunately, this book was a bit disappointing to me. I know I will be in the small minority as a lot of people on Goodreads (and at my book club that read it) absolutely LOVE the book. But I found it wanting on a couple of levels.

While the premise was great, I really feel that the writing was in want of another round with the editor. One thing that irked me (which is probably more of a personal thing) is that it was written in present tense. I really feel like it would have benefited from being written in the past tense as some of the sentences became a little jarring with all the variations of word conjugations with present tense. It really took me out of the moment in the book every time it happened. Especially when the book would go into flashbacks that were also present tense (with no indication that a flashback was happening). Also, there was a lot of telling rather than showing with the writing. One paragraph would be a great, descriptive paragraph and then in the next sentence three weeks would fly by and all you know is that one thing happened that was important, but you don’t actually witness it happening. That happened fairly frequently and again it was jarring.

Another thing that got me was how Hallmark movie-esque the story was. While I understand with the premise it is going to be a lighter book (despite dealing with grief – albeit the grief was very surface-level and superficial) and a feel-good story, it felt very cliché and at times unbelievable. Now I get that it’s fiction but when it’s a non-fantasy or sci-fi book, I kinda want some believability in it. With speculative fiction you know that there are going to be unrealistic aspects, that is an absolute given. But with general fiction, you, or at least I, want some reality. I admit I rolled my eyes a couple of times reading the book or scoffed when something particularly fluffy and audience-pandering happened.

It honestly makes me sad that I didn’t enjoy the book. I didn’t HATE it and I would recommend it to someone who wants something light and fluffy with no stakes or consequences. But it just wasn’t for me.

I do want to say, however, that while the grief aspect of the novel was very underwhelming, the letters that were written to go with each of the books that Tilly’s husband left her did get me to tear up. It was still able to elicit some emotion out of me. So, there is that. But otherwise, it was by and large a bit of a disappointment. I really feel like it could have used a little more grief and grittiness (even the people in my book club that loved the book said that the grief depiction made them feel like the author has never, or not recently, dealt with a loss that would cause comparable grief to what that FMC was supposed to be dealing with). I would have loved more of that grit and fewer cliches, and a total overhaul on the writing. But that, as always, is only my personal opinion. As I said, I will still recommend it to people looking for a book that fits the bill it delivers.