The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
by Katarina BivaldGenres: Fiction, Literary
Published on January 19th 2016
Pages: 400
Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen…Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist—even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory. All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town.
This book is a love letter to books and authors.
Amy and Sara write to each other about their love of books. They share favorite books from their respective countries – The United States and Sweden. Sara plans a 2 month visit to Amy in Iowa but Amy dies while Sara is en route. Unsure what to do now, she ends up opening a temporary book shop in an open store front in town to share Amy’s vast book collection.
The beginning of this book was amazing. It was easily on track to be my first five star read of the year.
- Reaching strangers in a dying town by pairing them with books that they would have never picked up on their own? Yes, please.
- A heroine who worried about only bringing 13 books on her trip because of the weight limit on her baggage? Totally understandable.
But then the book took an unfortunate turn. A silly romantic plot was attached to it between characters that had zero chemistry and a lot of the talk about books fell away. I had a hard time finishing it because at that point I just didn’t care any more. I dropped it down to 4 stars because of the silliness and only my love for the first half kept me from dropping it further.
So let’s pretend that part never happened and go back to the books. I was interested in seeing how many books and authors were talked about which turned into a quiz. There are about 65 authors discussed. It is an overwhelming white list, I was disappointed to see, but it covers a lot of fiction genres.
*Update* Well the poll is being hateful and the vote button doesn’t work so tell me how many you have read in the comments. Stupid free internet poll makers…mutter mutter mutter . I got 21.
What books and authors have you read from The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend?
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But then the book took an unfortunate turn. A silly romantic plot was attached to it between characters that had zero chemistry and a lot of the talk about books fell away. — UGH. I hate when that happens. The book was sounding so good, too! I’ll probably still check it out because I like books about books and reading, but still. Disappointing.
I was unable to vote as well but marked 29 of them.