I FINALLY READ BOOK LOVERS BY EMILY HENRY!

 

Just like the title of this post says.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry is an adult contemporary romance novel about a woman working in the book publishing industry named Nora. Nora is trying to help one of her clients, named Dusty, get her book published, but the coworker she is stuck working with to make it happen is a somewhat uptight guy named Charlie. 

Nora's sister Libby then invites her to go on vacation so they can unwind at Sunshine Falls, a small town near Asheville, North Carolina. While they are there they try to accomplish a list of things to do that are cliche movie tropes found in small town Hallmark-esque movies, such as going on dates with locals and going to unusual tourist attractions. Nora happens to run into Charlie while there, and it turns out his family lives in Sunshine Falls and he came back to help his family with their family business, a bookstore that's beginning to fall apart. While they continue to butt heads at first, Nora and Charlie slowly start to get to know each other better and even fall in love, and learn there's more to them than meets the eye. They also get better at working on editing Dusty's new book, and figure out ways to save Charlie's family's bookstore. 

Wow. I think I liked this book much more than People we Meet on Vacation by the same author, which I read last year and still enjoyed (you can check out that post here), but Book Lovers was a lot more emotionally moving. 

I will admit when getting into this book at first I was worried that I wouldn't like the enemies-to-lovers aspect since it's a very hit or miss trope for me, but Emily Henry wrote it really well! Or at least in a way that works for me. I think it's because Nora and Charlie were just rivals at work at first. They didn't dislike each other intitally because of who each of them were. It was more them disagreeing on stuff regarding Dusty's book. But as individuals they are nice people, and their backstories and them for being who they were really stood out to me.

Also, Sunshine Falls unfortunately does not exist in real life. And I know this not just because I live in North Carolina. I checked it on Google Maps. But Emily Henry does a great job of capturing small town vibes of a fictional small town.

I gave it 4.5 stars. That's was just because some of Nora and Charlie's make out scenes were a little too much for me...again. It's the same when I talked about Poppy and Alex in Vacation. I guess that's just a staple of Emily Henry's books. I usually just skim read the slightly steamier make out scenes or just skip over them. But that's just a reading habit of mine. 

Are there any books you finally got around to reading this year after they've been in your TBR for too long?