Goodreads | Waterstones

Don’t you just love the smell of old books in the morning?
Madeline Moore does. Books & Moore, the musty bookstore her family has owned for generations, is where she feels most herself. Nothing is going to stop her from coming back after college to take over the store from her beloved aunt.
Nothing, that is—until a chain bookstore called Prologue opens across the street and threatens to shut them down.
Madeline sets out to demolish the competition, but Jasper, the guy who works over at Prologue, seems intent on ruining her life. Not only is he taking her customers, he has the unbelievable audacity to be… extremely cute.
But that doesn’t matter. Jasper is the enemy and he will be destroyed. After all—all’s fair in love and (book) wars. 

I’ve been really looking forward to reading this one and it did slightly surprise me when it ended up appearing in my tbr for the prompt of lowest rated on my Goodreads shelf! Due to the low ratings, I was naturally a little hesitant to dive in, but I actually came out with a lot of love for this book.

I’ve heard this one is similar to You’ve Got Mail (surprise surprise, a movie I have never seen but am actually rectifying while writing this review), and this one follows Madeline and Jasper, who work at rival bookstores. I love the setup of this book and the premise has appealed to me for a while. What’s not to love – a girl wanting to save her family bookstore while also flirting with the cute guy from across the street?

And there really was a lot to love in this one. It was so entertaining and fun. It made me laugh, constantly. I listened to the audiobook and it had me chuckling all the time at witty one-liners. I admire authors who can make me laugh so much, because I don’t find I laugh out loud at books all that much. The only problem I had with the audiobook is that I really disliked the narrator at first, but I did manage to get used to it.

For the most part, I really liked Madeline, the main character. Although her initial views of relationships and commitment annoyed me slightly, I couldn’t help but root for her cause of trying to save the family bookshop. I also saw myself in her with her determination and stubbornness.

Although the family element of this one was quite toxic in places and the characters were hard to like sometimes, I liked how the book discussed these darker subjects. A large part of this book is following Madeline and her difficult relationship with her mother and rest of her family. Reading these aspects gave a completely different dynamic to the book that I found really interesting.

Overall, I can see why this book had low ratings but I really enjoyed it! It wasn’t without a few little problems, but it was super fun to read and had such entertaining elements.

★★★★
4 out of 5 stars

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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