This is dark and so unique. I advise you to go into this blindly as I did and just be prepared for anything and you’ll get what you came for. It’s extremely entertaining.
Victoria just wants to enjoy her books. But she’s got a problem. Her stepford wife type life with her husband, Eric, who doesn’t approve of her reading so much. He prefers her to be at his disposal instead after his first wife cheated on him. So Victoria goes to the local coffee shop after Eric goes to work so she can read. One day, a man comes into the coffee shop and is reading the same book she is and she is smitten and decides it is fate. She thinks he may be the solution to all her life’s problems. Victoria’s vivid imagination helps her escape from her miserable life, but can it help her escape for real?
I had no idea what to expect from this and I’m glad I didn’t because I never would have predicted it. I am still thinking about it. This is one people will be talking about.
Thanks to Harper Perennial and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my review.

I found this book just OK. It just didn't feel like something I could really get in to - just kind of a fluff read with no real thinking. Didn't hate it and obviously finished it, but not something I would be interested in reading again.

4.75 stars rounded up

I pretty much read this book in one day.

This was the first ARC I got approved on NetGalley and I honestly couldn’t remember the synopsis going into it. I’m so glad I went I to this blind.

How I would describe this book:
- a dark comedy
- about a woman obsessed with reading, who name drops a ton of great titles (would love to challenge myself to read all the books mentioned)
- the “bookworm” is in a horrible marriage and quickly becomes obsessed with a man she sees at the cafe she frequents
- has amazing writing (you can tell the author Robin is obsessed with reading herself)
- this book also has a twist of almost fantasy like aspects, where the main character has had a habit of astral projection since childhood.

This book really reminds me of gone girl but in a much more relatable way. At her core, Victoria just wants to be loved the way the characters in her books are. But, does that all really exist or are the traumatic thrillers more realistic and in a way …. Tempting ?

Interesting concept and loved the authors style of writing but didn’t enjoy the book as a whole.

Thank you the netgalley and the publisher for this arc and in exchange for my honest review.

I couldn’t get into this one, I ended up DNF at 45%. I tried a few times but couldn’t connect with the characters or their situations. I’m sure this will be a favorite for some but it just wasn’t the book for me.

Wow! This book is so interesting, but I would definitely read the description carefully before reading.

I imagine most people would not enjoy this book, or would be caught off guard by the dark topics and comedy it contains. Even just from the description it sounds like an unhappy wife wants to get rid of her husband so she can justify an affair. Just get divorced, problem solved.

I enjoyed this book as it was an interesting plot, unique idea, and had an interesting writing style. The characters are interesting, as well as the plot twists and turns along the way.

Again, I don't think I'd recommend it to everyone, but for a specific audience that loves darker comedy, they'll love it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC of this book!

3/ 5 rounded down.

I’m perplexed on what I just read. I should start with, I struggle with main characters that aren’t likable and the main character of Book worm Victoria is just very unrelatable. She’s funny and clever, but her narrative of being a disappointment to her wildly successful lawyer parents when she gravitated to literature and yoga don’t really hang with her general passiveness in her life. Someone who runs away to be a yogie doesn’t suddenly give up control of their life fully…

I found her sudden discovery of her disgust for her husband and life wry and entertaining but felt there wasn’t enough weight of the rest of the story to make it worth a strong recommendation. I’m still confused by the Victoria’s fantasies on if she believed they were realities or not?

I am giving it a 3 out of 5 because I really liked the author’s writing style, quick and sharp and funny in a direct way. I’d definitely read something else by her, but I just feel strongly meh about this book.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Harper Perennial in exchange for an honest review.

Massage therapist Victoria is married to uptight attorney Eric. She’s not happy, and he is very controlling over her life. She escapes through books, and detailed fantasy scenarios in her head.

I was confused about this book from the start. When Victoria is in the coffee shop, it seems like she has a sixth sense about the people around her. But she’s just fantasizing that she knows? It’s not really clear.

I read a lot of books. Like a lot. And I can generally find things I like about almost all of them. But I found all of these characters really unlikeable. They’re all terrible people, which I know from the plot summary that’s part of the point. But I just couldn’t get past the frustration and confusion. I kept thinking that it was bound to get better, that something would happen. And it did, in the very last chapter, but then I was even more confused.

I’ve read other dark comedies, as this book was described, but this just wasn’t it for me.

I kept thinking Walter Mitty with a dark side while reading this book. Victoria, a bookworm, is in a bad marriage and has an unsupportive family. She daydreams about ways her husband might die. Meanwhile, she sees the perfect man and knows that they are destined to be together. She also likes to "fly" around at night and enter this man's bedroom to be with him while he's sleeping. Weird. The whole book is just weird. It moves pretty slowly and not until the last couple chapters does it really get interesting. But this was not enough to salvage this book.

I would, however, like to thank NetGalley and Harper Perennial for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Oof. This was not my favorite read. Too dark and not a comedy imho as it was positioned to be. This is the story of Victoria, a woman trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage who escapes into books to find some semblance of a safe harbor. She finds herself obsessed with a man she sees from afar in a coffee shop, and a lot of the book is dedicated to her fantasizing about meeting him and even has her leaving her body to find him sleeping at night (!). This missed several marks and was disjointed and unsettling in a way that I just didn’t love. Victoria’s best friend was insufferable, her husband a true ass, and her eventual love interest also fell very short as well (which maybe was part of the point). 2 stars; I’m not happy I read this book in full and do wish I’d abandoned earlier in the story, as the ending is pretty disturbing.

Thanks to NetGalley for a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Now off to watch an episode of The Mindy Project to settle the hearticle.

"Victoria is unhappily married to an ambitious and controlling lawyer consumed with his career. Burdened with overbearing in-laws, a boring dead-end job she can't seem to leave, and a best friend who doesn't seem to understand her, Victoria finds solace from the daily grind in her beloved books and the stories she makes up in her head."

📖: Bookworm by Robin Yeatman
🗓️: Feb. 2023

MY REVIEW: ⭐⭐⭐/5
👉 I love a solid book about a woman who loves to read, especially if it's marketed as dark comedy; I also LOVE unlikeable characters, weird stories… But this just didn't hit the mark for me.
👉 A lot of the book was repetitive: Victoria hates the book she's reading, her husband is being terrible, she pretends to intimately and immediately know strangers just by looking at them… wash, rinse, repeat… and then she pines after some hot dude who doesn't deserve it (but, you know, I'm all for her not letting her husband keep her from finding her soulmate).
👉 Not much happens but when it does, it's predictable…
👉 The ending DID redeem the book because we got to exactly where I wanted.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free arc of this book.

This one got better as it went along, although I almost gave up on it. Easy quick read, open door romance but not too scandalous - you could just skim a few scenes. Lots of bookish enthusiasm and both literary and film references.

Mild spoilers.

However. I feel like if you’re going to make a character so unlikeable that your protagonist feels justified in wanting to leave them, you have to do a better job of explaining why they were together in the first place.

There was a bit of unreliable narrator to this, and I could see where it was headed at the end, but I wasn’t mad about it. Not great, not terrible.

3.75 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.


Victoria, a masseuse, is married to Eric, a lawyer. Victoria’s life is fairly comfortable. She and Eric live in a very nice, very white apartment in the city. Eric is on his way to making partner in his firm. Their parents are such good friends, in fact they are the ones who set Eric and Victoria up. However, Victoria and Eric aren’t really so happy.

Eric is buttoned up tight. His first wife left him for her trainer. On the rebound, Victoria snatched him up. After all, she does have a comfortable life. Eric loves TV, and Victoria loves to read. While Eric is watching his shows, Victoria reads her latest novel. Their social life mostly consists of monthly dinners with the parents. Victoria is bored.

So when she spots a very handsome man at her local cafe, she is smitten. Obsessed. Willing to go to great lengths to imagine Eric’s demise and her finding a relationship with this unknown male. Her very imaginative brain comes up with all sorts of ways for Eric to come to his end. Not that she’d ever consider actually putting any of these ideas into play.

This is a darkly humorous novel about not being happy with what you have and always wanting what you don’t. Victoria doesn’t have a lot of cause for unhappiness, but when she sees some new shiny thing, she’s tired of the man she has. It’s an entertaining book and an easy read. Victoria isn’t very likable as a character or a person, but then neither is her husband Eric. Neither of them has a lot of redeeming qualities. Yet, I did enjoy the read.

Don't Judge this Book by its Cover!

I love books about readers, bookstores, libraries, etc, so I snatched this up with only a light scan of the description. Consequently, I expected something like Eleanor Oliphant, but I got something like Eleanor with a little of Sarah Addison Allen's whimsy all smooshed into a Stephen King novel.

The main character, Victoria, even hints at the trajectory of this book when she frequently comments about books with horrible endings, where they feel like a train wreck that you can't look away from. Don't assume, like I did, that this comment is merely a fun commonality over which the reader and Victoria can bond. Oh no, it is foreshadowing, so be prepared.

Victoria is a quirky, likeable character who has lived a socially isolated life and feels stifled in her unhealthy marriage. She reads voraciously, has a vigorous imagination, and has the ability to look at an individual and know all about that person - their feelings, their circumstances, the people affecting their life. When she bumps into a man in the coffee shop who is reading the same book as her, Victoria sees it as a sign that they are meant to be and believes she is instantly in love him. She attempts to tell her husband that she wants a separation, but he and both their mothers quickly quell that idea. It is made clear to Victoria that she will not have the support of her parents, she will not have a job, and due to a prenup she will have no money. Consequently, Victoria begins imagining various scenes, inspired by her reading, in which she escapes her marriage through the death of her husband, Eric. Eventually, she begins acting on her ideas to eliminate him.
At the same time, Victoria uses her ability to leave her body at night and go visit the man from the coffee shop in spirit. At first this seems possibly like it is also an exercise of imagination, but later events confirm that it is quite real.
Without giving everything away, Victoria's questionable reading choices cause further problems in her marriage, her husband and closest friend begin having an affair, and Victoria's relationship with coffee-shop man progresses in real life. The borders between reality and imagination begin to blur and eventually collide, leaving Victoria free of her marriage and husband. However, the conclusion leaves one wondering how long it will be before her dream-come-true reality fails to live up to her imagination and she is right back where she started?

This book is well written and has fabulous use of symbolism and foreshadowing. Victoria's imagination truly becomes a force; this is "manifesting" in a whole new way. Her life essentially becomes the opposite of the question: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it...? In this case, if Victoria imagines something enough and believes that it is real, will it happen? In spite of the excellent writing, I still felt like I was "watching a train wreck" in slow motion, to use the author's own description of books where the character fails to learn anything. Victoria has an impressive ability and uses it foolishly without growth. What am I supposed to take away from this book? This is right up there with the excellent books from AP English where I loved the reading experience but then hated the book itself.

Victoria and Eric's life seems so perfect from the outside looking in. He's a hot shot lawyer trying to make partner and they live in an idyllic part of Montreal. Victoria always has her head in a book and is always creating scenarios while she is people watching at the cafe. Eric is very particular about how Victoria should act, and relies on his mother and mother in law too much for Victoria's liking. She regularly fantasizes how to escape her boring predictable life which regularly includes scenarios how her husband dies.

A wildly imaginative tale, a black comedy of sorts full of scenarios in which are not likely to ever play out. But haven't we all dreamt of something happening just to escape our current situations?

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the early read in exchange for my review.

Victoria is book-obsessed. A miserable marriage and dead-end job have her feeling stuck in a hopeless rut. She spends her time crafting backstories of passersby and she is completely consumed by her fictional cohorts. Until one day, she spots a handsome stranger in her favorite cafe who just happens to be reading the same novel she is. Is it fate? She now turns to feverishly recalling past book plots to devise the perfect plan to dispose of her husband and pursue the man who haunts her dreams. Deliciously dark and full of fun, literary references.

Hot diggity!

This book has all the stuff I love—a complicated and fascinating character, humor, just the right dose of smart metaphors, a brilliant ending, suspense, a plot that is nice and tight and moves right along. Add that the main character, Victoria, is a bookworm and I’m pretty much a goner. Books! Book habits, book titles, book tidbits, book addiction gone wild—all here.

There were three big hints that the book would make my favorites list—I couldn’t put the dang thing down, I was always chomping at the bit to get back to it, and I had no idea where the story was going. Oh how I love it when I know there are surprises a-comin’!

Victoria has a good life with a husband that looks oh so good on paper. We know how those stories go. You can throw that paper right out the window! Never fear, Victoria smothers the ouch-y reality with rich fantasies. There’s a battle going on between imagination and reality, actually. I rooted for imagination every time.

You see, Victoria’s secrets are not in the store or in her drawers, they are in her head, and they are doozies. Her books help her grow her secrets by providing ideas—I don’t want to say more because I don’t want to ruin the fun. Just know that she is bigtime underground; no one really knows that her life is fake, that the life she is living in her head is totally different from what she displays to the world. But Victoria knows everyone has secrets. At one point there’s a list of possible secrets that people keep, secrets that aren’t nice or acceptable, and it really hit me that everyone has secrets of some sort, and some are biggies. I ate that up.

The books. Oh the books. Usually I’m not crazy about a writer making allusions to books; sometimes it seems snobby and inaccessible. But here, I loved it, especially because I knew half of the books Yeatman is talking about! And what was different from the old book-name-dropping is that many of the books are new, twenty-first-century novels. Usually we see references to classic lit, period.

One thing I loved was how thoroughly I, and I’m sure all readers, can identify with Victoria’s intense love of books. We’re all in a giant book club. A life of books makes us all a little different from the rest of the world. The luscious solitude of reading, the richness of words, the ability of books to transport us to other places in our mind—this novel conveys all of this effortlessly and with love.

A character or two asks Victoria why she reads books that make her sad. That, of course, is a question I ask myself, and it got me thinking about it again (even with trips to Google, lol). One character has a big anti-book vibe happening (actually, it was worse than a vibe; it was more like a declaration of war), and that got my hackles up. And truth be told, it made me incredibly nervous. What would I do, really, without my book fixes? What would I do if I wasn’t allowed to read? I can’t go there…

Victoria spends a little time fantasizing about the lives of strangers—people at the coffee shop, for instance. Yeatman brilliantly distills their essence and gives us a compact picture of them in just a paragraph or two. At first I didn’t like that we had to read about people who weren’t part of the plot; they were just fantasies, not real portrayals of people’s lives. It’s like not wanting to listen to someone’s dreams because they’re not reality. Then I relaxed and got interested in the fascinating lives of fake people anyway. Hey, I have an idea—Yeatman could take any one of them and put them in a new story by themselves, make them real people—lol, I mean characters. I’ll sign up!

Here's a sample of some great lines in the book:

“He tried to open his eyelids, but they were impossible to lift, broken garage doors unresponsive to the clicker.”

“I despise sputum,” he had once declared early on in their courtship.”

“His face was her mind’s screensaver.”

“It was nasty but also oddly alluring, like a beautiful woman with rotted teeth behind a close-lipped smile.”

I could keep going with the gush, but it’s better if you can experience this book yourself. I really like the humor, but be warned that it’s dark. If you want a happy sappy story, then this isn’t the book for you. The ending is a surprise and oh so clever; just loved it. The book is just overall smart. And there’s not a wasted word.

This is my first read of the new year; what a great way to start 2023! Get your hands on this amazing debut. It comes out in February. I feel lucky that I got to read an ARC!

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

Based on the description of Bookworm, I expected a dark comedy with “wickedly funny” humor. Instead, I was disappointed by the how shallow Victoria seemed and how stereotypical the character and actions of her husband was described. This wasn’t the book for me.

Initially, I was intrigued by Victoria’s incredible ability to look at someone and uncover in her mind all the details of their life. She has a very active and imaginative brain. This extended to her fantasy about a man she saw in a coffee shop and decided this was her true love. Given the state of her miserable marriage, one can understand the need to fantasize about a different life. However, I tired of this soon and when she leaves her body to fly about in her dreams it became too much for me.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and the author, Robin Yeatman, for providing me with an early copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

What in the holy hell did I just read?

Robin Yeatman's debut novel has you vacillating between liking the book, not liking the book, questioning yourself, and then questioning everyone else.

In this case, you really can't judge a book by its cover. I thought I was getting into a light-hearted little rom-com, but that would be a NEGATIVO!!!!!!!!

This is a dark comedy, and I suspect this book will stay in the 3⭐️ category on Goodreads, as I anticipate many will DNF this one. It definitely won't be for everybody.

At almost 50% in, I was ready to throw in the towel, but ever since The Reading List, which was almost a DNF for me and became one of my top 23 books of 2023, I hold onto hope that things will get better.

And, they did. Better, not great.

A bookworm sees a man in her local coffee shop reading the same book as her, which clearly signifies they are soulmates. But, she has to return to her vanilla lawyer husband until she falls asleep and flies through the night to coffee guys house for a little smoochy woochy. Shortly after this pie in the sky romance, she starts to get murderous vibes about killing her husband. The woman is just a straight-up sociopath.

I really do like the cover, and the end did pick up for me, so I guess I'll give this ⭐️⭐️⭐️ very weird stars.

Available 2.14.23. Genius.

Thank you, Netgalley and Harper Perennial, for the ARC.

2.5ish, rounded up to 3.
I'm a little disappointed this wasn't a great fit for me, I love a good black comedy. From the get go it's clear that Victoria is quite a bit off the beaten path, but I didn't end up finding any of it actually "wickedly funny", even the parts about the nipples!
I was initially fascinated with how Victoria's brain went from one thing to the next, and her insistence that a guy she sees at a cafe with a book she's also reading (though she dislikes it) is her true love. After several scenes from her relationship with her tedious arranged marriage husband (where I felt like I'd have gone a bit crazy myself), I wasn't surprised she was looking for a way out. I just found her to be so shallow that I couldn't really root for her. Then she started "traveling" in her dreams and I just lost the thread a bit.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and the author, Robin Yeatman, for providing me with an early copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.