The Little Village of Book Lovers

I have read hundreds of books in my half-century on this planet. This is the first one I ever recall wanting to restart as soon as I finished. The prose is lyrical, magical and filled with words. I didn’t want this book to end.

It is referenced as a sequel to the 2013 “The Little Paris Bookshop”. The two novels aren’t literally connected, but there is an explanation given as to their relationship. (Think of it as a “post-credits” scene. Don’t leave early!)

I refuse to discuss the plot. That is because I don’t want to short-change anyone of even one word of this experience. If I had to explain it, I would say it is part Jane Austen’s “Emma” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, with part of Aesop thrown in for good measure. It defies genre.

This was written for those who voraciously devour vocabulary. Those who love the lexicon. Those who examine the evolution (or devolution) of language. The word “alchemy” is mentioned frequently, with substantive reason. I found myself taking photos of paragraphs, hoarding them until the July publication date. (I will be buying two copies of this book upon release - one for me and one to pass to a friend.)

I read this book slowly. The chapter titles are expansive and hysterical. It is a book to be savored. While reading, I felt as if I was in a library with tall shelves (ladder included), endless food, an exorbitant bathroom and ubiquitous candles which never closed. Nina George is now firmly on my “must read” list.

If I had to describe the book in one word it would be “charming”. Or maybe “entrancing”. Or “wistful”. Or “dreamy”. But then again, I don’t really have the words to properly describe it, as you can see from this review!

Thank you beyond words to NetGalley for giving me access to this ARC. I fully expect this to be the best book I read in 2023. July cannot arrive soon enough so that I can discuss this with others!

Marie-Jeanne is touched by Love as an infant and can thus see the marks of Love on the people around her. How will this gift effect those in her small French village. Can she help people make the connections of love? will she be able to find her own love? Meantime she spreads the love of books to her village and the surrounding countryside. I enjoyed this book but had to get used to Love and other qualities being characters.
This is a review of an e-Galley provided by NetGalley.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. I have enjoyed some of George's previously works and any book about a Book Lover is an auto read in my book. However, I think I had my expectations set too high for this one. It started out great and atmospheric, but I could not get used to the use of Fate etc being used as characters. It really stunted my reading of the story.

The premise of this book sounds very good. Unfortunately it was just not for me. This is the first Nina George book I read, I will give an opportunity to The Little Paris Bookshop, maybe that will be more for me.

I was SO excited for the premise of this book but it just fell flat for me. I had a difficult time getting into it, and despite giving it a few weeks it has just not been a book I can bring myself to reach for. This is a book for those who love the writing in a book - if you need a little something more to hold your interest, it may not be for you.

The Little Village of Book Lovers has the lush detail, beautiful writing, and emotional depth I've come to expect of Nina George. But until about the 40% mark, I wasn't sure where it was going. There didn't seem to be much of a plot, and I was confused when Love (yes, love is a character in the story) would randomly narrate a chapter here and there, philosophizing about its importance and unpredictability. Love tells the reader how young Marie-Jeanne is the only person who can see love in others as shapes and points of light, but she never sees it in herself. In other chapters the point of view is omniscient or, sometimes, that of an olive tree. The book seemed disjointed, and I wasn't sure I could hold on until the end.

BUT, then things started to come together. Marie-Jeanne's father becomes enamored of books when he delivers them to a local bookshop as part of his delivery business. Suddenly he decides that what the village needs is a mobile book lending service, and he willingly takes on the assignment. Although he faces resistance at first, soon the locals see changes in their lives as a result. The story focuses specifically on couples who resist being together even though they are clearly meant for each other, couples who are together but haven't found ways to fully express their love (including Marie-Jeanne's foster parents) and those who haven't yet met the person who is destined to be their life partner.

The author mentioned this book in her 2015 novel, The Little Paris Bookshop, and she says she felt obligated to actually write it for the fans of that book. I would say that she succeeded for those who are willing to read on after what might feel plotless and scattered to discover the riches of the remaining 60% of the story.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Gorgeous perfection.

This one, wow, it made me tear up, made me cry, made my heart ache.

I read this over the course of a couple of months - I like to savor things, and this book was such a treat, that I wanted to relish each chapter over a few reading sessions.

A lovely and beautiful read; I bet this one will be fantastic on audiobook.

Absolute recommendation ❤️

Lyrical and tedious - that is how I would describe this book. It is written in the most beautiful way about a truly unique concept. But half the time I found myself thinking “please get to the point” or “what are we really saying here”. Parts of it were enjoyable: the setting of rural France and the passion for books. But the characters were too numerous with little personality for me to easily distinguish between them.

This is a book that is a lovely representation of how books change lives. I enjoyed reading this heartwarming story of one woman who travels throughout a small area of villages to loan books to change people';'s lives. You will find many French referances here and French names throughout. It is a sweet story of the love of books and the importance one sensitive person places on finding love. A interesting read. I enjoyed the quotes and referances to books throughout. I ended this book with a TBR list that are all new to me. Well done to the author.

Thank you to the author, the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. My review opinion is my own.

I was super excited to read this as the descriptions notes “A young woman with the extraordinary power to bring soulmates together searches for her own true love in this tender, lyrical standalone novel inspired by the “bona fide international hit” (The New York Times Book Review) The Little Paris Bookshop”

I found this book extremely adorable, yet also very heavy. It was hard to get into and felt like I had to really get into the characters in order to appreciate them. I loved how Nina George created Love as an invisible “person” who helped the characters along their journey (as well as Reason, Fate and Logic), but I also wished I had known this is heavy with Magical Realism because some of the plot points confused me for a bit before I was able to organize everything in my head. That being said, it is a very cute and uplifting book, especially good for anyone looking to read about the mysteries of Love.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Nina George, and Random House for the ARC!

The Little VIllage of Book Lovers is a charming and original story of a young girl who can bring soulmates together but is unable to find it herself. Although I was very excited by the plot and eager to read it, I was never able to get into the story and could not finish it at this time. If you are a reader you know sometimes you pick up a book later that you couldn't finish the first time and it blows you away, I think this will be that book for me. It is beautifully written and very detailed (what I did read), I still recommend reading this book and I will try again later.

This was an odd read for me. While I was reading I enjoyed the fluid writing and mystical prose and the delightful idea behind emotions being creatures that touched humans to dictate their lives. Yet, once I put it down to get on with the tedious thing called work, I found I had little desire to pick it up to start again.
It is beautifully written and such an original idea that is tied up in the most basic of storylines - finding love. It just didn’t grip me enough to pull me back in with the eagerness I usually have for books. Thankfully this was a Netgalley ARC so I finished it and while I read I felt the gentle nature of the tale, the lull and slow pace of the hillside villages. It felt nice.

This was one of the most beautiful pieces of literary fiction that I have ever read. At its most basic, The Little Village of Book Lovers is a story how books bring people together, particularly lovers. What makes this novel especially unique is how it’s told from mainly from the perspective of Love, with musings from Logic, Fate, an olive tree, Death, and others.

I don’t think I’ve ever annotated a book as much as I did this one. There are an incredible amount of quotable thoughts and reflections.

Occasionally, this read is a bit hard to follow with the “village” of characters and its beautiful, poetic writing — but it’s all worth it for the 5-star read.

“Love is. We agree on that, right? It is. Like the sea, like the sun, like the mountains. That tells us nothing about … how long it will last. Or what color it is. Or what form it will take. Like the sea, the sun, and the mountains, it is always different.“

Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this ARC!

This book is so hard to describe. It was both exquisitely written, while ago hard to read.

I found it hard to follow who all the characters were and the breaks in the story were jarring.

But some of the descriptions were so beautiful and the creativity in the story was amazing.

This was a slow read for me so I could get through it.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley
Before starting this review, I went back and read my review for The Little Paris Bookshop. Years later, the bookstore that I mentioned in that review is gone. In some ways, it feels as if America is further away from books than before – not only with the various book bans that have been going on but with the independent bookstores that have been closing. At one point I lived within a twenty minute walk or a ten minute trolley ride from four independent bookstores. Now, it is more like forty minutes to an hour, and I didn’t move.
And yes, I know Booktok and Instagram, still exist. And we have Goodreads. There’s Librarything. But in some of those cases, book love feels more performative or even judgmental. Graphic novels don’t count as books to some people, audio books aren’t reading say others. There are people who gush about how much they love books as they stand before book cases where the books are spine turned in or color coded. And you can tell, just tell by listening, that they haven’t read the book they are gushing about. But it doesn’t matter because now multiple people are saying you can’t say anything bad about a book because of an author’s feelings over their book baby or something.
Sigh. And yes, I realize I was being judgmental in the above paragraph.
Yet, in some ways that’s way we need books like this.
Or maybe we should all move to France – the land of wine, cheese, and books.
This book isn’t so much a sequel to the Bookshop novel, but more of an addendum as it is the novel that inspires the characters in that novel. This book is about Love and Marie-Jeanne. Marie-Jeanne is orphaned though she has two devoted if a bit strange adopted parents. Despite the deaths of her parents, her life is, thankfully, free of trauma. Because of her relationship to love, she can see soulmates. This perhaps makes the love story part of the book a bit too simplistic and predictable, but that really isn’t the point.
Like it’s forerunner, this book is a lover letter reading. The books mentioned including the Claudine books but also the great works of literature. What is more importantly, people’s relationship to books and literary play a central role. Francois, Marie-Jeanne’s father, starts a mobile library because of his relationship and view on books. Part of this books best sequences are his attempts to get people to read. And that’s where the other part of love comes in – not only love of literature and the feel of a physical book in your hand but also the love of discussing literature with those around you.
Marie-Jeanne comes into her own and discovers she who is by reading. This use of discovery is actually quite lovely and illustrates the power of books to help us understand ourselves. In many ways, that is the point of this short novel. While told largely via the viewpoint of Love, the book isn’t so much about the romantic love that fills much of its pages – but about the love of the written word in all its forms as well as love for those around us.

This was an incredibly symbolic exploration of love, where it comes from and what it does. Someone has described this book as being about "a young woman with the extraordinary power to bring soulmates together searches for her own true love". This is a gross under-representation of this book and the overwhelming depths hiding within.
While reading this book, I felt as though I wasn't giving it the emotional and mental capacity that it deserved. I'll blame it on my brain's trouble to comprehend French names which really stifled my enjoyment of the book.
The premise of a group of people traveling through the countryside loaning out books is such a special and lovely one. I absolutely adored the main three characters of Marie-Jeanne, Elsa, and Francis, but I loved the thoughtfulness and hidden vulnerabilities that each character showed throughout the story.
The Little Village of Book Lovers is an astounding, breathtaking, and beautiful book.

The story begins narrated by Love and continues with doses of other ethereal characters like Death and olive trees. Telling the story from the perspective of Love was really interesting to me, and the book was poetically written. The book’s pacing is pretty low key, but thoughtful and has an interesting mix of magical realism at the heart of the book. The story ends in a delightful note, and I think the underlying arc is that you can’t really understand love, even love itself.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, in return for my honest opinion.

I found this to be a lyrically and extremely beautifully written book. However it starts at a slow pace but stick with it, trust me, because it is well worth the read, how could it not be? It is about love.

This book was hard to follow for me. The random cut ins with love and the olive tree had me totally confused on the story. The story seemed to drag in most places. I think just the format of the book did not work for me. The basic storyline (without all the extra stuff) was interesting but only 2/5 stars interesting.

4/5 stars

I really struggled to get into this book, while it’s unorthodox format and clunk start almost had me walking I’m glad I persevered as it turned into a poetic story of how a choice can shape a community and change one’s life. If you’re a sucker for magical realism, found community, and lyrical writing keep going in this book, it gets better I promise.