Urban, pragmatic Nora is trapped in a pattern of getting dumped by boyfriends who travel to a rural community and fall in love with local women who are Nora’s opposites. The prologue to Book Lovers, which is set two years before the novel’s main action, illustrates that ambitious New York literary agent Nora Stephens is the type of antiheroine who is typical of many romance novels. The last ten pages of Book Lovers proves to be truly beautiful I just wish the middle stretch had been the same.This guide uses the 2022 Penguin Kindle Edition of Book Lovers.
Henry parodies the tropes of small-town romance without being cruel. Was there any reason for them to quit talking, except that Henry was trying to draw their eventual HEA out? And yet I had some big issues with the lack of communication between Nora and Charlie. Charlie is, however a delightful hero, and the romance here works beautifully. She’s almost hysterically smothering in regard to Libby, so when her sister announces her intent to move there is much ballyhoo. Nora has a big problem, and it’s that she can’t unclench. Does it want me to gently snicker at those Hallmark tropes or take the reference to them as a loving tribute? I don’t think the book itself really knows, either. But will the pages to come bring them misery or joy?īook Lovers is as meta as all get-out, but its tone alternates between self-knowing trope acknowledgement and groping to tug on its audience’s heartstrings.
Especially Nora’s, because they know each other from their jobs and they’ve never been charmed by each other. Charlie Lastra is a grumpy, introverted editor who’s no one’s idea of a stereotypical hero. He does, but not in the package she expects. They’ll spend all of August there, and surely Nora’s prince charming will come along. On Libby’s request that they take a sister’s holiday Nora comes to Sunshine Falls (yes, really), North Carolina. She doesn’t expect that her workaholic ways are going to be interrupted by her sister, Libby, for whom she would do anything. Nora Stephens is a literary agent with a top-notch New York firm. But it’s still a B-level read, with some fun characters and good ideas.
That means it doesn’t flow quite as easily as either of the author’s previous books, or come off as well. A little too winking and knowing in its metafictional take on small-town romance tropes, it attempts to pay tribute to the genre and tweak it all at once.
Book Lovers is as charming and well-written as I expect any Emily Henry book to be, yet it didn’t make me smile the way Beach Read or People We Meet on Vacation did.
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