Unfortunately, I am unable to finish reading "Bookish People" at this time. I've tried downloading the digital copy through Kindle, Pocketbook and NetGalley Shelf, but all of the apps have the Harper Muse logo appear hugely in the middle of almost every page. It splits up paragraphs and is incredibly distracting. I'm going to try to get a physical arc so I can complete the book and update my review at a later time.

Thank you to the author, Harper Muse and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A book about books, a bookstore and people who love books - should be completely my jam, but I had trouble connecting with this one. The beginning was dark and depressing, and that atmosphere kept popping up at odd moments. Yes, there was a lot of madcap humor, but also a lot of confusion, uncertainty, strange tangents and utter chaos too. The constantly changing POVs didn't help, nor did the contradiction between the impression given of a crumbling independent bookstore on its last legs, and the huge volume of books being ordered. Overall, a bit of a hot mess, although very funny in parts.

I so so rarely dnf because i believe in giving all books a chance. Mainly because writers take sooo long to pen down their stories, it is the least qe readers can do right? But for this one and for the sake of my not falling into a slump, i actually DNF-ed. Sadly.

I mean, the beautiful cover and premise of a story within a bookstore totally sucked you in. About a middle aged woman who owns an independent bookstore and who recently lost her husband, losing her drive for life and for running her business. Insert her event's manager who seem to have alot going on in her life too. Main plot is basically about how they were supposed to cancel a booktour of a scandalous and controversial poet but things took a different turn somewhat.

So i don't know what happened in the end because where i left off, about 60% into the book, nothing and everything was happening all at once. Nothing pertaining to the main plot but everything else that involved a truckload of sub characters was going on. The writing in a way has this messiness like Backman, where he can talk about 652 things at one go in one chapter but you totally can feel it. However, this messiness here didn't work out. I couldn't get my mind into what was happening at all.

I was very excited about Bookish People as I am loving the new book store theme novels being published right now. Unfortunately, this book was not one that grabbed my attention and the number of storylines introduced in beginning made it hard for me to follow storyline. I did not finish this one, but hope others enjoy it more.

I really had very high expectations for this book. Fantastic title and cover. What's not to love about a novel set in a bookstore. But this was flat, so flat. The pacing and timeline were all over the place. For me, the two main characters were not likeable at all. Way too long for a story that was all over the place. Just a bad combination overall, when I thought this book was going to be a homerun.
Nevertheless, I am grateful to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read Bookish People in exchange for my honest review.

3 ⭐️

All of those are pretty much for the cover. I really struggled with the writing style and ended up DNFing because I could not get into.

Firstly, the cover of this novel was so cute. I had very high hopes for this novel because of it. The title in itself is self explanatory for any book lover. However the story’s plot is a little complicated. Set in Washington DC as an independent bookstore. Sophie is the owner and she doesn’t seem to be feeling it anymore.
The writing style was difficult to follow for myself as it isn’t in my preferred way plus there is a lot of stuff going on at the one time which makes it confusing however I enjoyed some elements of this novel as the characters are well developed to an extent as they each have their own personality.

I really do like the book cover and I do like the plot of the story--Sophie Bernstein is a grieving widow who owns an independent bookstore in the DC area. Raymond Chaucier is a novelist whose book tour was canceled when he was blamed for his wife's suicide. Sophie's bookstore was the only store that will host the book tour. But when Sophie asks Clemi to cancel the tour, Clemi suscpect that Raymond maybe her biological father...

Though I liked the plot, reading this book to me felt like a heavy load. Too many characters which left me confused about the whole story as a result, which also made me bored and confused throughout the story. I wasn't sure who is the actual main character in the story. This wasn't as funny as it was labeled to be. Overall, I couldn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped it would, which actually lowered the expectations of this book and the rating. Sadly worth only 2.5 stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

Give me all the books about people loving books! I really enjoyed this one and was loving the narrator! highly recommend.

Sophie Bernstein loves her bookstore but after her husband dies and her manager quits to move on, she starts to unravel. She begins obsessing over finding a safe place to hunker down while the comedy of errors that is running a bookstore surround her. I loved this book for its characters, the way life just continues to move on, and the fact that everyone seems to have their own little secrets and ways of coping.

Thanks NetGalley, Harper Muse and Susan Coll for a copy to review.
It took me a while to get into it but eventually it hooked me into the bookstore life and its characters ( humans, reptiles and vacuum cleaners)!
I liked it

I picked this book up because I like bookish type people and because the cover is so cute. Also, I'm a sucker for books about books. The setting is a very busy Washington, D.C. independent bookstore. Sophie Bernstein is the owner. She has run the bookstore for a long time and it seems her heart is no longer in it. She just wants to hide. There's a hidden room in the bookstore and she wants to move all her stuff into the room and just hide away from life and the busy bookstore. Clemi is the store's events coordinator and she books a controversial poet to come and speak. There hav ebeen protests and riots at other bookstores and all the US bookstores have cancelled his appearances. Clemi thinks the man might be her father, and she doesn't want to cancel even when Sophie tells her to do so. Jamal is the bookstore manager, but he is leaving for law school shortly so they will be shorthanded and need to replace him. Florence, an ex-employee who was fired, is causing problems. And there's an interested party who wants to buy the bookstore.

There's a lot going on in this book and it's somewhat confusing as it goes back and forth between characters. There's an End-of-Day report at the end of each chapter that's chock full of strange things that happened a the bookstore. There's a pet tortoise, Kurt Vonnegut, who is owned jointly by Noah and Clemi who keeps smelling up the store. I enjoyed reading abou the tortoise. I also enjoyed the vacuum cleaner with a mind of it's own! All of the characters were quirky, and I usually really like quirky characters, but I don't know if it was too many or too much, but something about the book just didn't work for me.

Thanks to Harper Muse througth Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on September 2, 2022.

Sadly, I really struggled to get through this book. I had such high hopes based on the cover, title, and description- bookstores are one of my favorite settings for a novel. But it was just too dense and chaotic with too many characters all of whom I had a very hard time liking - or quite frankly caring about at all. I'm sure there's an audience out there that will love this book - it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Thank you to the author and publisher for an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Sadly this book was a DNF for me. The premise was so interesting but there was just to many small subplots and it created such a chaotic story. It was so frantic and all over the place, that I couldn’t follow it.

Unfortunately this became a DNF for me. I really wanted to love this book because I mean, how cute is that cover?! But unfortunately the formatting of this was really hard to read through. The Harper Muse logo was MASSIVE on every single page and led to me having a hard time reading. I based my star rating on what I did manage to push through and read.

Sad to report that this one didn’t work for me.

I couldn’t connect with the characters, the long chapters bored me and the internal monologues really didn’t work for me.

Unfortunately - this one didn’t work.

I was really excited for this book, the premise seemed interesting plus the title and cover are eye-catching. However, it is a struggle to push through the text based on the writing style. I also found it hard to connect with characters, which led me to DNF this one.

Thank you to Net Galley and Harper Muse for the ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reader's copy of this novel.

DNF at 15%. I just can't bring myself to care about these characters, as much as I thought I would love the bookstore setting. I was enjoying some of the insight into running a bookstore and setting up author events, but I found myself dreading going back to the book because I just didn't care what was going to happen to these characters.

I really was looking forward to getting sucked into this book, as it had everything I was looking for in a great book! I adored the bookstore vibe and the pet tortoise, but unfortunately everything else fell flat for me. The main character, Sophie, is having a bit of a difficult time with her husband recently passing, son that is struggling and the cute bookstore she runs is having a bad season. The chapters were long and I found a difficult time connecting with the characters.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book was not for me, unfortunately. I found the plot to drag on, the internal monologues to bore me, and the writing style dragged on. DNF'd around 25% through, which I usually never do.