Release Day Review 🍃

📖 Q: what’s been one of your fave reads of the year so far? This is one of mine! 👆🏻

(Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.)

I feel like I’m still unpacking some of the things I was explicitly & implicitly taught about how young girls & women should act & books like Emily Henry’s Book Lovers, where the heroine, Nora, is often referred to as a shark, freaking delight me.

She loves high heels, she is a devotee of her phone, contracts, & NYC, she is shamelessly devoted to pros & cons lists, & the hero, Charlie Lastra (*swoon*) tells her YOU DON’T NEED TO CHANGE (that might be an exact quote from the book FYI), you are a terrifying force of nature & I worship the ground you conquer.

Book Lovers is a dream book to me, one that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. It’s dislike to love and fish out of water with two uptight, big city leads who move temporarily to a small town, & it’s peppered with references to Jane Austen, the Dewey Decimal system, & Rebekah Weatherspoon. I wanted two Epilogues.

It’s also about the relationship between sisters & how that can be affected by feelings of responsibility & protectiveness—how hard it can be to throw those things off & chase something for yourself.

This book had me smiling & thinking how funny it was, it had me swooning for both leads, it had my heart twisting…it’s sooo good!!

5 ⭐️. Out today!

CW: previous death of mother & trauma related to that death. Feelings of loneliness.


[ID: a white woman wearing a green sweater, jeans, & rainbow sandals holds an ebook in a meadow with yellow flowers. On the second image the same woman sits in the field with a toddler at her side.]

I received a copy of this book for review from NetGalley. Any book with the title, "Book Lovers", is going to snag my attention, and this definitely lived up to the hype of the title This book is a love letter to books and reading, their many glorious tropes, and the way we can lose ourselves in them. The banter is snarky and clever, the characters have more layers than an ogre, and the plot twists made me gasp. While I haven't read the author's other books yet, this makes me really want to do so, and I can't wait to see if they are this good too. I loved this, and stayed way too late because I couldn't put it down.

Ok… I don’t even know where to begin. The fact that I was gifted this by Berkeley just floors me and I’m so thankful and so ready to share my honest review.

This was amazing! I haven’t cried for a book since Bright Side in January. This book was EVERYTHING!! Nora and Libby’s relationship… I’m gonna start crying again. Okay… their relationship was amazing. It’s what you hope sisterhood can be. You don’t always get along, one person is alway putting the other first, but the love, SO MUCH LOVE.

And then there is swoony Charlie. I’m so sorry, but Emily Henry is freaking brilliant. To keep giving nods to the unrealistic romances out there and giving us this, with HIM, just stop it. It was amazing. Nora and Charlie have the classic enemies to lovers trope, but it is so much more! It’s hard to speak on it without spoilers, but seriously, pick up this book!

This was such an honor to get this ARC and be a part of the book tour! I have read all of Henry’s book and where Beach Read is still up there, Book Lovers may have become my favorite for so many reason! If you’ve read it, please let me know so we can talk about it!

<i> Thank you so much to Berkley Publishing for the eARC in exchange of my honest review</i>

Do you find that you tend to connect more to fictional characters than people in real life? Do you find yourself visiting your favorite local indie bookshop whenever you have a particularly hard day? Did you relate to Luisa's song from Encanto a little too much? Then Book Lovers by Emily Henry might be the book for you.

This was definitely one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 and it did not disappoint. It gives:
- Small town romance vibes
- Reluctant allies to lovers
- Big sister energy
- Book industry jokes
- Bigfoot erotica
- Incredible banter

Book Lovers follows Nora Stephens, literary agent and big sister who often times served as the caretaker of the family. After the extreme success of a client Nora agrees to go on a sisters trip to the small town of Sunshine Falls. The last person she expects to keep running into is Charlie Lastrata, a book editor from the city who is known for holding nothing back, no matter who it might hurt.

I am absolutely obsessed with Nora and Charlie's relationship. While in the beginning they clearly dislike each other there is such chemistry and also mutual respect for the other. I think their draw to each other is the perfect example of insta lust with a slow burn romance which is my favorite kind of vibe.

It is cheesy at times and definitely self aware and basically the definition of meta, however, I found that all of the book references were made in such earnest, nothing felt forced or out of place and I would be lying if I didn't say I teared up at least a couple times. In its simplest form, it is a book for book lovers, by a book lover, about book lovers and I loved every moment of it.

Emily Henry has easily become one of my favorite authors. This is my third read by her and I absolutely loved it. Nora and Charlie were such charming characters in a very unique and different way. The romance hit off every element of a good book, the chemistry felt so real that I could almost somehow feel it. Book Lovers turned out to be one of my favorites of this year and I highly recommend it!

This book just gives me all the feels, it's heartwarming and witty, and pokes fun at everything bookish - editors, agents, authors, tropes.. It starts with Nora, a literary agent who loves her job and NYC, in fact she's a bit of a shark. Her sister Libby convinces her to visit a small town for a month to unwind. Not just any small town, but the one that her biggest client's bestseller is set in, and she comes up with a checklist of vacation activities which seems to be inspired by Hallmark movies. All the characters in this story are completely lovable and have great character development, even the antagonists are complex. All the stars for this masterpiece, It's the perfect book to start the summer with!

I LOVED Beach Read and really enjoyed People We Meet on Vacation. For this one, I definitely liked more than PWMOV. This romance book, to me, didn’t fall into exactly one trope which made it stand out! Really loved the focus on not only a romantic relationship but also a sister relationship. It changed it up for me which I thoroughly enjoyed. A little slow in the middle but the ending is *chef’s kiss*.

Emily Henry has given us her newest masterpiece and I loved every page! As a book lover (pun intended), it was so fascinating to read about characters who are in the publishing industry and self aware of the tropes they’re participating in. This has been one of my favorite reads of 2022, I truly wish I could forget it all just so I can read it again. The characters, storyline, romance are all *chefs kiss* and I couldn’t get enough. This should be added to the top of your TBR!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the eARC.

Literary agent Nora and editor Charlie cross paths unexpectedly in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina—the very setting of a book that Nora pitched and Charlie passed on months before. Getting to know Charlie in a different light actually sheds a new light for Nora, and rethinking her life choices then comes to light. With her sister Libby by her side, this bucket list full of items to get Nora to relax, meet someone, fall in love like they do in small town romance books… will she achieve her happily ever after?

Let me start this review with: I LOVE CHARLIE! Everything about the man was swoony, charming, smart, and gah, the banter between him and Nora was full of wit. So darn good. I also liked how there was a layer to Libby’s and Nora’s relationship—their past, their loss, and how to move forward in life as sisters. Most of all, the small town charm, the tropes analysis and predictions, applying bookish theories into real life added another layer of depth to the story. Easily one of top reads this year, and totally recommend to the fans of BEACH READ.

Vacation romances aren't usually my go-to but they just might be after this one. As with the other Emily Henry books I loved, Book Lovers has the funniest, sweetest, and most relatable characters, and the romance throughout the book had me blushing like crazy ;) Thank you so much to NetGalley and Emily Henry's team for this humor and compassion filled ARC. I'll definitely be re-reading this at least 3 more times.

Well, she’s done it again folks. I know I’m not alone when I say that it feels like she wrote this book *especially* for me. I really don’t know how she does it. I laughed (a lot), I cried (a little), and on more than one occasion I just wanted to crawl into the pages and live in them. This is an enemies to lovers rom-com, yes, but the romance isn’t at the center of the story. It’s got so much heart. If you’re a sister, a book lover, a daughter, a dreamer, you will love this one. Thank you Emily Henry for giving us another masterpiece. And thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

I was pretty nervous to read this because it was getting consistently rave reviews and I was afraid it wouldn't live up to the hype, but it turns out that I had nothing to worry about. I honestly thought that this was pretty close to perfect, a funny rom com that still has a lot of substance, with a great enemies to lovers plotline and a main character I found really compelling. Nora is a literary agent in New York, very devoted to her work and with not much of a personal life (a common romance trope), who gets roped into a vacation in a small town near Asheville, NC, by her younger sister. The town, Sunshine Falls, was the setting of one of Nora's author's most popular novels, and she agrees to go with her sister Libby because Libby is pregnant and has been acting distant. Libby is the most important person in Nora's life, and has been since their mother died when they were both teenagers, and that really defines their relationship and has had a massive impact on Nora's life path. Nora gets early pages from a draft of a book from one of her authors (the same one who write the book set in Sunshine Falls) while she's on this vacation, and she realizes that the cold, driven, hard-as-nails shark of a main character is based on her, which makes her want to change some things while she's on this vacation. She comes across professional enemy Charlie, who happens to be from Sunshine Falls, and they end up collaborating to edit the new book. I usually love books set in the publishing world, but this was even better than usual because it's also like a book set within a book in the publishing world? I'm not doing it justice, but I just loved every minute of reading this. n

This is my first Emily Henry read. I went into the book not knowing exactly what to expect except that her last few books had been highly read, loved, and touted by readers and #BookTok. I had high expectations for Book Lovers being in the book industry myself and all the hype around this book in particular. And, while it did keep me engaged and reading, I didn’t end up loving Book Lovers.

What I did enjoy:

-That the book was as much about past trauma and how it affects relationships – familial and romantic.
-That it focused on Nora’s relationship with her sister as much as the romance and that they worked through their issues.
- That Nora is a high-powered literary agent who loves her work, and the book doesn’t condemn her for loving her work and wanting to center her life around her career.
-The way in which Book Lovers examined in a meta way book tropes and turned some of them on their heads.

What I did not enjoy:

-Like a couple others have commented on NetGalley, I had the feeling of déjà vu in a couple scenes like Emily Henry had lifted characters and plots from other media. I KNOW there were a couple of things that happened in Book Lovers that were lifted wholesale from Gilmore Girls (the hospital scene in particular with Luke…I mean Charlie).
-How very slow burn the romance was. This is being sold as an enemies-to-lovers romance. But it is much more people who were both grumpy the first time they met and then later when they were less grumpy found out they’re basically the same person.
-The slow burn was too slow, and the spice was almost nonexistent. It was a little dull.
-Libby the sister calling Nora “sissy” and also just generally throwing fits like the child she doesn’t want to be treated like the whole book.

Overall, I suspect that if you've enjoyed Emily Henry before, that you'll enjoy this book. It was a good read, but not a home run for me. My thanks to NetGalley for access to the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book Lovers hits the nail right on the head in all of the things its doing, which is just as much a small town romance as it is a story about sisters. Nora, who works in publishing, goes with her sister Libby to vacation in a small town where Nora rediscovers an old connection in Charlie. The story follows the relationship between Nora and Charlie but also delves deep into the nuances of Nora and Libby, creating a fully fleshed out bridge between romance and literary fiction that Emily Henry often strives at.

As for Charlie and Nora, these two hold up just as much as all of Henry's protagonists have. They are both witty, their banter being an absolute highlight of the book, have great chemistry, and are a great demonstration that "opposites attract" is not always true.

The only things I was craving was more wrapping up to the plot regarding Nora's client and the "Nadine" book, I felt like that was something we were meant to be tracking that never really resolved to much of a conclusion. Other than that, this was another practically flawless outing with Emily Henry and I can't wait to keep reading her books in the future.

**Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC of this book.**

Emily Henry nails it again in her release of Book Lovers.

A slow burn of romance in this summer hit, Nora, a literary agent from NYC hits Sunshine Falls, a sleepy little town in North Carolina with her sister Libby, but not without her handy checklist. Nora workaholic, a career woman who has goals will not put her phone down and enjoy life as she has work to do. What she doesn't count on is seeing her nemesis Charlie. He is your typical, grumpy editor wonders why is he Sunshine Falls and why does he have this effect on her? She doesn't do "this". She keeps her distance from men ever since.....................

Libby starts to make a task list for Nora to complete throughout the summer and it is pretty cute as it is far removed from Nora's city life. Nora is a bit put off as Libby has been pretty distracted and avoiding calls from her own husband. Nora has been the "fixer" ever since their mom died, can she fix what is going on in Libby's life?

Eventually Nora and Charlie work together on a book with an author they are both obsessed with. Will this be enough to pull them together? Will they give up the fast paced city life and grow together in Sunshine Falls? Will they even get together?

This will be one to read for summer of 2022!

Another book by Emily Henry that she absolutely knocks out of the park. This is the third book of Henry's that I have read, and they are all very different, but wonderful in their own way. This is a romance novel that takes on several romance tropes (small town, enemies to lovers, save a small business, etc). The romance story between Nora and Charlie would have been a great book all by itself. What Henry does so well is to inject so many details that you feel like you really know the characters, and add such emotional depth to her stories. This wasn't just a romance novel, it was a story about the relationship between an older sister and her younger sister; it was a story about grief; it was a story about going outside your comfort zone to go after your dreams. And all of this worked so well together. Having lived in Western North Carolina for a number of years, I loved the setting. If there were to be a book I could cook up in a lab with everything I love in it, it would be this book.

Emily Henry, author of Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation has written another wonderfully funny, sensitive, enjoyable love story which has the makings of a Hallmark movie.

Nora Stephens loves books. That’s why she thrives as a literary agent. One of her clients is Dusty Fielding whose books are set in a small town called Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. But to her disbelief, no one seems very interested in her next novel, all except Nora.

Enter Charlie Lastra a book editor in New York who Nora meets to discuss Dusty’s next book. It does not go well. Not only does he think the book is a failure which Nora can’t believe, but the two seem as if they would never have been able to work together anyway.

Time moves forward and just as Noral predicted Dusty’s new book is a hit. With more money than she ever thought she would make; she finally is able to relax. She gets together with her pregnant sister Libby who she has been neglecting because she has been so busy. The two sisters are very close. Their mother died suddenly years ago, and Nora had to step in and become a surrogate caretaker, a job she still feels obligated to do and would not think of giving up, even though Libby is happily married with children.

Libby’s favorite author is none other than Dusty Fielding. Since she will be giving birth again soon, she has the idea that she and her sister should have one last hurrah and visit Sunshine Falls to see what the place really is like. They could spend the month of August there with Nora working remotely and they could even put together a bucket list of Sunshine Falls activities. Although this doesn’t seem to be the vacation of a lifetime Nora would have chosen for them, she can never say no to Libby, so, off they go!

But Sunshine Falls initially does not seem to be the happy place they thought. There is one cab in town which only goes certain places and lets you out to walk the rest of the way, the bookstore is the only place with spotted Wi-Fi and the one restaurant in the town does not cater to vegetarians and ordering salads is just about against the law! But they are there to bond, so Nora decides to just sit back and relax and enjoy her time with Libby. Then she sees what could only be described as a ghostly apparition…what possibly could her nemesis Charlie Lastra be doing in Sunshine Falls? I mean, he hated Dusty’s last book!

And so, begins the love/hate relationship between two people who desperately both love books…but just not each other. Then they are thrown together by the literary gods and must work together. What could possibly go wrong!

As time goes by during their visit Nora and Libby begin to learn about each other and how the trauma of their mother’s death perhaps had never been fully put to rest. With Nora now busy working with Charlie whom she begins to see differently, she also begins to feel her sister somehow slipping away from her. She just can’t figure out why.

What’s going on?

Book Lovers is a sentimental reader’s dream, filled with funny, crazy characters and even a smoking hot construction worker! The witty dialogue entices the reader to read on, but also makes them wish the story will never come to an end.

Thank you #NetGalley #Berkley #EmilyHenry #BookLovers for the advanced copy.

I am a sucker for a grumpy hero and I got exactly what I wanted with this story. There was so much happening here, but it never felt chaotic or unorganized. It was definitely a love story, but more than just romantic love. It was about loving ourselves and how to love other without being a martyr. I really enjoyed the town of Sunshine Falls and it's inhabitants.

OH MY GOD. If you are a Taylor Swift fan, call it what you want is the song for this story. This book is for older sisters. It's for the sisters who parent the younger ones and the girls who hide their fears and not only conquer the world but absolutely break the door down. Miss Henry, girl you have done it again, constantly raising the bar for us all and doing it flawlessly. I'd say I'm surprised, but I know who you are. I've seen it up close and personal. If you liked beach read you are going to love book lovers. Nora and Charlie are so lively and witty and honestly might be some of the best characters that Henry has written so far.

Read this book if you love getting lost in a story, live your life by checklists, and don't know how to turn off your work email.

Nora is a very successful literary agent living in New York City. She has a life she has worked hard to excel in and with that success comes a strict regimen that she has to stay on. She has a checklist for dating, she has a strong relationship with her peloton, and her little sister Libby comes before everything. So when Libby suggests a month long vacation to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina (ironically the setting of one of her most successful book launches), she has to begrudging say yes. What she doesn't suspect is the town is not exactly what the book made it sound like and her editorial nemesis, Charlie, happens to be in the rural town at the exact same time. Navigating through a vacation checklist that Libby makes, Nora toggles between trying to stay present on the vacation and also stay present with work.

This book was once again, another amazing Emily Henry read. I mean seriously, can Emily Henry write a bad book? I tore this story apart and found every character so loveable. Nora's icy demeanor is something that we get to peak into and root for her to open her eyes in situations. Libby's loving persona makes you want to give her a huge hug all the time. This one is definitely a summer read you need on your list.

Thank you to Emily Henry, Berkley Publishing Group, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This title is out TOMORROW, May 3rd.

Goodreads review link:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4674781794?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
Blog post featuring this review will be posted during the blog tour in the upcoming week.