Book Lovers by Emily Henry
After reading Happy Place by Emily Henry, I turned to Book Lovers. The title drew me in more so much that I didn’t even read the synopsis before starting the book. Right from the prologue, this book drew me in and held my attention close. “When books are your life…,” it starts out, “you get pretty good at guessing where a story is going.” Still, though, Book Lovers by Emily Henry managed to surprise me, with plenty of emotional and evocative twists and turns throughout its pages. Full of witty banter and poignant moments, Book Lovers is a must-read for any…well…book lover. Read on for my honest thoughts on Book Lovers, along with favorite quotes from the novel and more:
Shop Themed Finds Based on Emily Henry’s Books
Looking for more great reads from Emily Henry?
Check out all of my reviews of her books here!
About the Author, Emily Henry
Emily Henry is a bestselling romance and young adult author. Based in Cincinnati, Henry keeps her private life pretty well under wraps. Her first YA novel, The Love That Split the World, was published in 2016. Beach Read, her first non-YA novel, was published in 2020. Since Beach Read, she has published a new book each year, with her most recent, Funny Story, coming out in April 2024. Three of her books (including Book Lovers!) are currently in development to be made into films.
Plot Summary
One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn’t see coming…
Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.
Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.
If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.
My Thoughts on Book Lovers
5/5 Stars
My second Emily Henry novel, I picked this one up when I stopped at Barnes & Noble for the hard copy of Happy Place (more on that here). The title Book Lovers drew me in and I read it as a bit of escapism on a flight earlier this month.
In short, Nora, a dedicated (and potentially cutthroat) literary agent, is convinced into going on a trip with her beloved little sister, Libby. Libby and Nora lead very different lives (Libby is a mom with a growing family, Nora is resolutely childless) but they come together for a summer sisters’ trip.
There were so many moments that I was literally laughing out loud at this book, and then others when I felt tears stinging my eyes, and I enjoyed every minute of it. From the on-the-nose prologue poking fun of romance tropes to the love interests’ banter to the emotional moments of honesty between the protagonist and her sister, this book really has it all.
Favorite Quotes from Book Lovers
- “That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to tend to them and you’re a heartless bitch.”
- “The last few months, though, we’ve been ships passing in the night. Actually, more like a submarine and a paddleboat in entirely separate lakes.”
- “How inconvenient would it be to fall in love with a person only to find out they had a doll room? The answer is ‘very.'”
- “Again, I feel that heart-pinch sensation, like I’m missing her, like all our best moments are behind us.”
- “He smells like evergreens and impending rain.”
- “Maybe my brain is organized by the Dewey decimal system, but right now all the shelves seem to be on fire.”
- “Anything broken can be fixed. Any problem can be solved.”
- ” ‘Do you really have the emotional resilience to leave a checklist unchecked?’ she says.
Something in me twitches.
I really do fucking love a checklist.” - “Not every decision a woman makes is some grand indictment on other women’s lives.”
- “He made the world open up around me, like there were colors I’d never seen, new levels of happiness I couldn’t have imagined.”
- “People always talk about compartmentalization like it’s a bad thing, but I love the way that, when I work, everything else seems to get folded away neatly in drawers, the books I’m working on swelling to the forefront, immersing me every bit as wholly as reading my favorite chapter books did when I was a kid. Like there’s nothing to worry over, plan, mourn, or figure out.”
- “A good bookstore…is like an airport where you don’t have to take your shoes off.”
- “Those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.”
- “Apparently I drank enough to poison myself, without even getting past tipsy. One of the many ways that being thirty-two absolutely rules.”
- “I read once that sunflowers always orient themselves to face the sun. That’s what being near Charlie Lastra is like for me. Three could be a raging wildfire racing toward me from the west and I’d still be straining eastward towards his warmth.”
- “It’s one thing to accept that the person I love most is fundamentally unknowable to me; it’s another to accept that she doesn’t quite see me either.”
- “Just because not everyone gets you doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”
- “That’s the thing about being an adult standing beside your childhood race car bed. Time collapses, and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.”
- “Hidden there, under my rigidly manufactured sense of control and my checklists and my steel exterior, there is always fear.”
- “Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.”
- “That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.”
- “She wonders whether what comes next could ever live up to the expectations. She doesn’t know. You never can. She turns the page anyway.”
Shop Emily Henry Themed Merch & Books
Where to Buy Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Book Lovers by Emily Henry is available for sale from Amazon and Bookshop.org. Be sure to subscribe to Emily Henry’s newsletter here for more details on her books and recommendations. You can find some bonus content for her books on her website here as well.
This post is a part of my What to Read series, where I share themed reading lists and book guides based on genre, time period, theme, or author.
You can peruse more of my What to Read reading guides here!
