The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman – 352 pages
ARC provided by Berkley and Netgalley for an honest review.
Book Blurb:
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They’re all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She’ll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It’s a disaster! And as if that wasn’t enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn’t he realize what a terrible idea that is?
Nina considers her options.
1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)
It’s time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn’t convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It’s going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.
My Review: 4 stars
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill drew me in from the title alone. Don’t most readers live a bookish life? I just love having a book store as a setting for any book, and this one was no exception.
Nina was a quirky and funny character, although she never saw herself as that. She was a habitual list maker, honest and committed to her routine. Finding out she had many new family members from a father she’d never knew she had came as a huge surprise to her. She ultimately considered them a complete disruption to her order driven life.
Between necessary meetings with a great nephew and half-brother, Nina’s world opens up in ways she could never have imagined. Nina’s idiosyncrasies make her an absolute fool when it comes to dating and clearly, she can’t adjust her calendar to allow for it. She schedules reading into her evenings, which I actually admired. Tom, a trivia game-night competitor, that doesn’t enjoy reading and only knows about sports, somehow charms his way into Nina’s life. It was cute, albeit predictable.
Overall this book speaks to the bad practice of judging other people, finding family where you least expect it, accepting change, the power of friendship and the love of books. It’s a cute, easy beach read that although predictable, and quite sterotypical, will entirely delight and entertain you.
Quotes I liked:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
“It was so difficult in text, and she wondered if her generation’s reliance on written communication was making them better writers or simply more confused people. Body language told you so much; text on its own was subject to misinterpretation in every way possible. You’d think they’d all get very good at subtletly and vocabulary, in order to make their brief conversations more precise, but she hadn’t noticed that trend.”
“Then don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow, baby. Don’t worry about how it might go wrong; just let yourself be happy.”
“Being surrounded by books was the closest she’d ever gotten to feeling like the member of a gang. The books had her back, and the nonfiction, at least, was ready to fight if necessary.”
“Biology is not destiny, and love is not proportionate to shared DNA.”
“Nina had looked around and realized she would never run out of things to read, and that certainty filled her with peace and satisfaction. It didn’t matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine.”
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