Listen, this book is long and there's no way around that. Kelly Link's experience as a short story writer seems to have thrown her into rebellion with this doorstopper. I really can't get over how long this is and that it just didn't need to be that way.

That being said, Link's personal style is present - this book is weird and wild, it's fun and tender, it's about love and friendship and death and adventure and trust. The characters are absolutely lovable and you are rooting for each of them throughout the novel. Can't wait to see where Kelly Link's mind goes next.

I have loved everything that Kelly Link has published and The Book of Love is no different. I loved reading this. It was fantastic. It's well written. The characters felt real and I fell a little in love with them. It was just FANTASTIC. Ugh, I can go on and on about this. I do think that this book isn't for everyone but if it is right for you, it's so freaking right. It's weird but it's lovely.

If I hear “splinter” one more time……

Imagine watching an interesting fight scene. Except every minute there is a cut to commercial. That is exactly how I felt reading this book.

The underlying plot was interesting—three friends find themselves in the waiting room before death. To escape their fate, they will need to complete three trials.

If this book had primarily focused on one or two characters, I would have liked it; however, there are over 30 characters, and they all seemed to have their own backstory. The Book of Love was so busy playing character whack-a-mole that the plot suffered.

Thomas/Kristopher/Avelot should have been a prequel. Mo’s mom and grandmother should be their own short story.

To try to compensate for the character soup, there is a lot of repetition. For example, there would be a reveal. Then, an off-screen character would join the original group of characters, and someone would repeat the reveal over again.

As far as the title and cover is concerned, they are puzzling to me. How does this book qualify as “The Book of Love”? The cover has moons on it, but the moon wasn’t a very significant part of the book (there was a very small section very haphazardly tacked on at the end).

Overall, the concept of this book is a wonder of imagination (the fight scene in my opening paragraph), but it gets lost in the character building (the commercials). This interfered significantly with the suspense building.

DnF at 15%. Slow and flowery language. I just couldn’t get into this one at all. Apparently the first half is dull, but that’s 300 pages of meh so onto the next book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the eARC.

Like others who have offered their review, I was a bit taken aback by the elements of horror that were woven through this one. My mistake on this, but any book over 500 pages, let alone 600 is too long for me to enjoy. This one had such an interesting premise but was not for me.

I ended up needing to DNF this one because it was giving me serious nightmares and I couldn’t sleep. I’m not really a horror person and while I wouldn’t fully qualify this book as horror there are definitely demonic elements which is a no go for my mental health. From the description I thought it was going to be more fantasy/magic as opposed to demonic.

Since I DNFed it I’m going to rate it based on the 30% that I did read.

I thought the concept was very interesting and although it took me a few chapters to get into the unique writing style, once I did I really liked it. All of the characters were interesting and had their own unique voice as well. I also really enjoyed the mystery that was set up and the few twists I got through were super exciting!

I’m giving it 3 stars, because I did enjoy what I had read so far, but it wasn’t quite good enough for me to try to power through the nightmares to finish it.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and statements are my own.

I was very excited to start this book, as I have read Kelly Link in the past and enjoyed her work. Unfortunately, I had a really tough time with The Book of Love. I thought the prose was beautiful but there was nothing pressing me to move on and continue reading. It was very slow moving and although the characters were well crafted, it was simply missing that something to make it compelling. I think it suffers from being too long and a condensed version would have made this book something special.

Normally a long book isn't daunting to me, but for some reason this one just felt so long. I think there could have been a little bit of condensing or less POVs (there were just so many). I think overall the premise is really interesting and I like the idea that they're slowly remembering or figuring things out and you're not quite sure whose POV is accurate. There's so much promise here and I'm sure many will really enjoy it, it just wasn't quite for me.

For a debut novel, the premise is fascinating. Three teens have disappeared and show up out of thin air almost a year later, and there's magic and mythical creatures involved. I was very much looking forward to reading this.

The writing style is extremely hard to follow. I understand this is how some think and talk, but to me it was like I was jumping around from page to page and having difficulty keeping my place. There are multiple POVs, so each character took a turn with rambling thoughts and conversation and coming into the scene backwards (after events had already happened).

With the story ending up over 600 pages, it was hard to get through, especially the parts that seemed to be just filler. It just wasn't that enjoyable to me, even with the draw of magic.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions expressed are my own.

I kind of liked the writing style but honestly, it was just too long and felt stuffed unnecessarily. I think I would have liked it more were it trimmed down.

I just really could not get into this book and ended up having to DNF. It’s a long book and I just couldn’t push myself to finish when I wasn’t personally enjoying it.

This was a wild ride. To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what I read — there was a lot happening from resurrection, tiger attacks, quirky coffee shops, murder, winning the lottery, unicorns and much more. It truly kept things unpredictable.

It did take me a while to adjust to Kelly Link’s style. Once you adjust to the meandering, stream of consciousness style of writing, it was fairly easy to lose yourself in the story. The trick was picking out the important pieces of information the author was dropping as the mystery of the three teens’ deaths came to light. In my opinion, a lot of the writing could have been condensed. This book definitely didn’t need to be 600 pages long and that was my biggest issue.

While I didn’t love the shifting POVs each chapter (I lost track of how many characters it switched around to), it definitely added to the feeling that you were getting little pieces of the puzzle with each part and it did all come together in the end (mostly). For me it was a rounded up 3 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the early arc copy to review!

Wow. Kelly Link amazes me! I was just introduced to her work last year and was so excited to get an ARC of her first novel. I went into The Book of Love blind, I just saw Kelly Link and said yes, I'm reading that. I loved every minute of this book. I got a little nervous when I realized it was 640 pages, but I shouldn't have been. I was hooked from the beginning and couldn't put it down.

The novel opens with Susannah grieving the loss of her sister, Laura, her ex-boyfriend, Daniel and one of her close friends, Mo. We find out they went missing almost a year before and no one knows what happened. But, then, their high school music teacher magically brings them back and makes it where no one remembers they had been missing. There are magical quests, a goddess who wreaks havoc on this small, lovely, seaside town (Malo Mogge was horrible, but she was especially entertaining). There are weird dreams, a missing key, centuries-old magical characters, and more magical weirdness It was just so much fun and exactly what I hoped for from Link - weird and whimsical. It is dark at times, there are some truly heartbreaking events, but it's also full of love and hopefulness. I know it's a long one, but I honestly could have read more.

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the e-ARC of The Book of Love.

Maybe it’s just me…. But I didn’t get this at all.


Kelly link writes very well- but maybe I’m just not smart enough for this one.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing an arc for an honest review

I attempted to read this book twice and could not make it past the first 5%. The writing went back and forth between characters and overall made very little sense. It’s possible that the story could be good but I just could not get past the confusing writing style. If you are into reading different writing styles, this book may be for you but it just wants not worth reading for me.

First, I think it's important to note that this is a novel by the incomparable Kelly Link who has a very strong narrative style that is NOT for everyone! Which is okay! But if you're a person who has tried Link's stories in the past and didn't enjoy them, this may not be the book for you.

Okay, with that aside, let's dive into the narrative. The plot centers around 4 main characters - Susannah, Laura, Daniel, and Mo. After dying and being resurrected by their music teacher, Laura, Daniel, and Mo are tasked with figuring out where they went and how they came back. Susannah is somewhat the reader character; she did not die and is not included in much of the discussion between the three, despite being one of the links that connects the three (and key to the mystery). The story weaves in and out of each character's narrative, denoted by the chapter titles, the book of ______ (the book of Laura, the book of Mo, etc). The narrative isn't completely linear; sometimes we go back to get important background information, and sometimes we go sideways to characters we didn't realize were important.

In the best way possible this novel feels like dream logic; it's winding and tangled and doesn't always make sense until you get another 50-100 pages in. The language is at times harsh and direct, and at times dreamy and fantastical. Like her other work, it is clear that every word and punctuation mark is chosen with clear focus and deliberation. I loved reading this novel; if you're a fan of somewhat dreamy and wandering novels that have beautiful writing, I can strongly recommend this novel.

I tried so hard with this one, but it did not work for me. While the beginning definitely had a Midnight Library vibe to it - which I did not like - even if this one pulls off the world building framework a bit more cohesively, I couldn't get into this one. The magical framework of the world was slow to come together and relatively scattered, which wouldn't have been a dealbreaker. But with the multiple POVs early on from the beginning, I had a hard time having any of the characters solidifying for me. It was difficult to get a sense of who each character was and to sink into the mystery, while still reeling from the previous chapter. My favorites were Susannah and Laura, but I found myself dreading other character's POVs until we got back to them. The Book of Love is slow and unhurried. While I believe that it will find readers who like become absorbed in the almost stream of consciousness narration and atmosphere with a hint of whimsy, it felt a little bit like grasping pieces of sand in an hour glass for me.

This book has beautiful writing but something about it has me struggling to read and follow along. There seems to be a lot of meaningless filler that does not provide enough plot wise to warrant so much detail.

I am unable to finish this book as I am just not the target audience. I am unfamiliar with Kelly Link’s previous works and as such was not sure what to expect with her writing style.

I am sure that there are many, many people who would love this book. It truly has such a great premise.

When I was writing fiction some 25 years ago, Kelly Link was making a name for herself as a short story writer at the same time I was trying to (though I wasn’t making that much of a name for myself as it would turn out). Her latest book, The Book of Love, is her first novel. For that reason, and the length of time between her debut short story collection and The Book of Love, for anyone to say that this novel is highly anticipated would be a massive understatement. What’s more, Link has gone big and not gone home with this one: her debut novel runs some 640 pages! It is a massive undertaking to read, and anyone interested in reading this might want to take a few sick days off work or school to get through it. As the protagonists are teenagers, this might be classified as being a young adult novel, or a book for the young at heart, at least. However, with all of this said and unpacked, The Book of Love has been getting mixed early reviews from the major U.S. book publishing trade publications. Kirkus Reviews says “This book has many enchantments and moving moments, but it would have been better, and more magical, if it were shorter.” Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly trumpets this work as a “masterpiece.” “Link dexterously somersaults between tonal registers — from playfully whimsical (love and magic are both explained via a comparison to asparagus) to hair-raising and uncanny (a cat goes from grooming itself to devouring itself whole) — without ever missing a step,” says the latter publication in addition. So which one is correct? Well, it’s a matter of it being a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B.

The book is about three young friends or classmates — Laura, Daniel, and Mo — who have died but have been resurrected by their high school music teacher, Mr. Anabin. Anabin is a kind of wizard along with a man-animal named Bogomil, who both come up with a game for the teenagers to play. The kids must go on a quest to figure out how to use the magic they have been imbued with as reanimated figures. Two of the friends will be allowed to live, and the other two (another teen named Bowie has been reanimated but is of no relation to the others) will be sent back to the realm of the dead. Much of the book, then, details the travails of these youth as they fight to reclaim the lives they had before they died. From there, the characters pile up and the magic realism elements come into play as the teens make their way to becoming magicians who may or may not be tasked with guarding the otherworld as a “reward” for their efforts.

On the plus side, this is a highly creative and unusual book. Especially early on, this reads like an adult version (or young adult version) of the Harry Potter series. The whole book feels as though the author was making the story up as she went along, so the plot keeps you on your toes. It also helps that there are some appealing queer main characters in this, which is a refreshing change of pace from such characters usually taking more of a backseat in popular fiction. The book additionally can be read as a coming-of-age story as the main characters come to grips with both sex and death. And, getting back to the characters for a moment, they feel very real: there are children in the book who act like real children and not as a stilted version of adults. All in all, I’m pretty sure that fans of Link’s previous work will be pleased and will lap this up. However, the book is also Way. Too. Long. You could easily omit the mid-section of the book, which is boring and not particularly plot-heavy, and wouldn’t lose too much of the spell of enchantment that this novel casts. Another deficiency is that Link tends to overexplain things. Something will happen, and then a character will explain what has just happened to another character when it has already been explained. Link also drops a few balls in juggling temporal space: action will happen, and then the proceeding chapter will go back to before that action, but from another character’s point of view — which makes for a bit of a confusing muddle.

That all said, The Book of Love is a novel that has all of the hallmarks of a book written by someone who has been best known up until now as a writer of short stories. Going back to the review in Kirkus, Link could have benefitted from an editor with a stronger hand. Still, I don’t want to be churlish as Link is an intriguing writer and highly — to borrow a word from one of those reviews — uncanny fabulist. In some ways, she is one of the very best writers we have working in the field of magic realism. She promises in the acknowledgments of this novel that her next one will be shorter, so The Book of Love might be a case of a writer ironing out the lumps and figuring out how to best write a novel. I am confident that — when it comes to the subject of novel-based work — Kelly Link can only get better from here, and here’s to hoping that her next book doesn’t take 25 years to write. While The Book Of Love didn’t need to be told on an epic scale, it is an epic story of both love and magic and is an agreeable enough palate cleanser for more of the same. I’m looking forward to what might be next from the pen of Link but hope that the sophomore novel doesn’t turn out to be difficult. However, as the winner of a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant,” Link has already proven she is one of a kind, so I am hopeful that Link can only get better from here — the only way forward is up — and that The Book of Love is just a middling novel written by someone learning how to write one.

This one was not my cup of tea. I have not read the author before and did not know what to expect. I couldn't get into it, it was a little different for my tastes. I think others, especially familiar with the author, will enjoy it. It is also 632 pages, which is quite long for me.