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Well, where do I begin?

Have you ever read a book and felt as though the author is looking deep into your soul; that it’s as if the author picked up your entire being and wrote it onto the page?

Everything that Abbi described about Nina in this book, I felt reflected in my own personality – from the way she relates to books, to her feelings about people… it was as if I was reading about myself.

In fact, Nina and this book stuck with so intensely even after I finished reading it that it ended up inspiring my instagram handle, @thebookishlifeofbecks.

When I read this quote for the first time, it hit deeply. Ironically, as someone who loves words and writing, I have always found it difficult to express exactly how I feel about my own company and the company of others… and yet, this sums it up perfectly. While I love and crave being around people, often I find it mentally exhausting. I adore having conversations and there are topics which I could talk about for hours, but it is true that I feel the most calm when I am alone – where I don’t have to do or say anything, and I can simple be.

Am I guilty of doing this too? Yes. Yes I am. I will write down lists of books that I have already read in my reading journal, simply because I love the thrill and satisfaction that comes with crossing them off!

But aside from characters, the story itself was actually pretty great too! I loved how Nina was forced out of her comfort zone and realises that she actually had a lot more in common with her new found family than she initially believes. It’s certainly a book that emphasises the metaphor of ‘never judging books by their covers,’ as there could be something wonderful that you’re missing out on.

One of my other favourite things about this story was Lydia’s passive aggressiveness. Usually I don’t like characters like Lydia as I tend to find them annoying and too offputting to warm to, but I thought the development of her relationship with Nina was absolutely wonderful, and how they both warm to one another as they get to know each other better; and, how they both come to understand that they are more alike than either of them would care to admit.

But if you know me, I’m a sucker for romance, especially realistic romantic stories, and this was most definitely that. It felt really organic and natural and wasn’t overly ridiculous or cheesy in the way that a lot of YA romances tend to be. I think that a lot of bookish introverts like Nina are wary about entering relationships with people that do not read a lot of books because they’re worried about a lack of intellectual conversation and that they’ll get bored with their partner because of this; or people like Tom are wary that those women who are self-proclaimed bookworms are potential insufferable arrogant know-it-alls (we’re not)… but actually, this book does a wonderful job of highlighting the peaceful harmony of the two together and the beauty in a book lover/non-book lover romance.

Though, ultimately the thing that I adore most about this book is that it’s essentially a love letter for the quiet, nerdy introverts who believe that will love will never come their way because they’re too awkward, weird, average, or socially dysfunctional to find it. (I feel like this often). Because as Nina will tell you, if you open your mind and your heart to every possibility, you might just find your happily ever after.

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Favourite lines:

✨ ‘It is like all good independent bookstores should be, owned and staffed by people who love books, read them, think about them, and sell them to other people who feel the same way. There is reading hour for little kids. There are visiting authors. There are free bookmarks. It’s really a paradise on earth, if paradise for you smells of paper and paste.’

✨ ‘It also meant she thought of books as medication and sanctuary and the source of all good things. Nothing yet had proven her wrong.’

✨ ‘In solitude she set goals and made them, challenged herself, took up hobbies and dropped them, and if she periodically cleaned off her bulletin board and stuck up new goals and plans and dates and budgets and bought a new planner in the middle of the year and started over, so what?’

✨ ‘Some people take energy; some people give energy… Occasionally you ✨get lucky and find someone whose energy balances your own and brings you into neutral.’

✨ ‘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.’

✨ ‘You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.’

✨ ‘If you’re not scared, you’re not brave.’

✨ ‘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.’

✨ Mystery readers were everywhere, voracious, highly partisan and passionate. They were among the store’s best customers, and unfailingly polite. In private they embraced a bloodthirsty desire for vengeance and the use of arcane poisons and sneaky sleuthing, but in public they were charming and generous. Romance readers tended to be fun and have strong opinions. Nonfiction readers asked a lot of questions and were easily amused. It was the serious novel folks and poetry fans you had to watch out for.’

✨ ‘Tomorrow would be better. At the very least, tomorrow would be different.’

✨ ‘Biology is not destiny. And love is not proportionate to shared DNA.’

✨ ‘You do realise it isn’t mandatory to live your life online, right? For thousands of years we managed to be miserable or joyful in private.’

✨ ‘Nothing. The first thing you should always do is nothing.’

✨ ‘Coming out of a book was always painful.’

✨ ‘Life will throw you curveballs, but it’s rare you can do much more than duck.’

✨ ‘I have lots of favourite books because I have lots of moods and I have a favourite book for every mood.’

✨ ‘Nina knew the double whammy: the emotion itself and the frustration of not being able to out it into words. She’d read somewhere that if you can’t put language around an experience or feeling, it’s because from your earliest childhood, before speech, when everything was inexplicable and overwhelming.’

✨ ‘Life tends towards chaos, sadly. I thought I had my life all planned out nicely, and then… everything changed completely. It’s all very well to have a plan — it’s a good idea — but you have to be able to walk away from it if you need to.’

✨ ‘Do you know the best feeling in the world? It’s reading a book, loving every second of it, then turning to the front and discovering that the writer wrote fourteen zillion others.’

✨ ‘In public, Nina was a quiet, reserved potion; in private she was an all-singing, all-dancing cavalcade of light and emotion. Unless she was a quivering ball of anxiety, because that was also a frequently selected option.’

✨ ‘He wasn’t a poet, but whatever. She wasn’t a competitive skier. It didn’t matter what they weren’t; it only mattered who they were.’

✨ ‘Anxiety is what kept us alive, back in the day. It helps us know when things are wrong, when situations are dangerous or people mean us harm. It’s just sometimes it gets ahead of itself, right?’

✨ ‘That’s one positive thing about texting; you can pause and consider your options, whereas in face-to-face conversation, a silence of three minutes would be weird.’

✨ ‘Maybe there is no real thing for anyone. Maybe all of us change depending on where we are and who we’re with.”

✨ ‘How many people do we encounter every day who might be related to us, or simply people who might have become the best friends we ever had, or our second spouses, or the agents of our destruction, if only we spent more than seconds with them?’

✨ ‘If I walked inot my kitchen at night and flicked on the light and saw a penis lying on the ground, I would definitely scream and hit it with a broom. At the very least, I would climb on a chair until it rolled away.’

✨ ‘It takes a lot of energy to be with other people. It’s easier to be myself when there’s no one else there.’