Book Review: Book Lovers

Spoilers!

One of the most challenging aspects of being a human in relationships with other humans is trying not to fix everything. To just be with the other person and listen without offering a solution is excruciatingly difficult. For friends, family, lovers — we don’t like to see them in pain, ergo, our natural reaction is to try to take away the pain in some measure, not realizing, of course, that being present and listening is a form of pain abatement. Likewise, pain that arises from perception differences at the family level also creates moments of not being able to fix it, only accept it. For example, those who grew up under the same household and with the same parent or parents, often view their upbringing differently. In that way, even siblings will always have distinctly unknowable parts of them shaped by those necessarily disparate perceptions and experiences of their upbringing. Emily Henry, in her 2022 meta rom-com book, Book Lovers, explores the ways in which these two concepts intersect and diverge, creating the messy tapestry that is our lives.

Can prose be iridescent? If so, that’s the first word that popped into my mind reading my second Emily Henry book (going backward now after reading her latest book, 2024’s Funny Story). Her prose seems effortlessly charming, crackling with charisma and wit; it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious, while also hitting raw nerves and issues that make me ruminate on what it all means, not to mention, the wistfulness around books and the sappiness I feel with love. When anything seems effortless, such as writing this good, that means true skill is at work. What’s particularly fun about Book Lovers is its existence as a meta reflection, if at times a satirical one, of romance novels and the tropes emblematic of them. And yet, what makes tropes and cliches tropes and cliches is they are based on real life, in some form, and so, even when being meta and satirical about romance novels, Henry is not only writing one herself, but leans into such tropes, gleefully and delightfully.

Nora, an agent for a successful author, Dusty, who Charlie, an editor at a publishing house, didn’t see the worth in her burgeoning book (seemingly), living in New York City with her younger sister, Libby, who has a husband, two children, and one on the way, agrees with her sister that they should absolutely lean into the trope of going from the big city to the small town of Dusty’s book’s fictional town: Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, replete with a checklist of all the tropes they can successfully complete, like hooking up with a local, hunky lumberjack. They’re slated to be there a full month. We later learn Libby was already planning on moving to Sunshine Falls to better afford and accommodate her growing family, and she was hoping some of the small town charm dust would float in front of Nora’s eyes.

For the meta within the meta, Dusty’s next book, which Nora is working on with, incidentally, the help of Charlie, seems to be ripped right from her experience with Nora, a shark-like agent, who is an icy workaholic woman, which startles Nora: am I really like this? The reason she actually is protective of herself is a.) she was emotionally hurt by a break-up and b.) more importantly, she was essentially a father-like figure to Libby when their mother was alive, and then became the mother-like figure, too, after their mother died. She’s thus, fixated on fixing Libby’s problems and protecting her, even now, when Libby is herself a mother.

Henry, like in Funny Story, writes mother-daughter relationships incredibly well. They’re resonant, but it’s also where the split in perception happens between Nora and Libby, where Nora saw her mother as striving to make NYC dreamy for her two girls, and Libby saw only a struggling, desperate mother. Henry also makes a character of NYC (and Sunshine Falls, which isn’t the idyllic small town of Dusty’s book, which is precisely why Charlie, who is from there, thought the book didn’t work), with how alive Nora feels in the city in the throngs of millions of people and how invigorating the hustle and bustle can be. Having been to NYC a few times now, it does have that allure and aura to it.

Given this is a romance novel, we know where the story is going. But hey, predictable things can be good, and I’m a sap regardless. Nora, who sees Charlie as her professional arch nemesis for turning down Dusty’s book — her client’s book, after all — and who she engages in repeated good nature put-downs with, including ribbing him by sharing Bigfoot erotica, comes to fall in love with him and him her. Henry writes these back and forth quippy battles so well. She somehow makes me want to read a hundred pages of email correspondence between Nora and Charlie (how they initially communicate). They’re fun to read and be in Nora’s head as it’s happening. This is where a lot of Henry’s trademark humor comes into play, and it’s so good.

Like with Funny Story, Henry tries to put a new twist on the “happy ending” formula. The expected ending, as Nora riffs throughout, would be her moving to Sunshine Falls with her sister, and to be with Charlie, who is staying there and not returning to NYC, either, to help his family (his father had a stroke and they own a struggling bookstore he needs to run). In effect, then, giving up the city and life she loves, along with the prospect of her dream job: being an editor at a publishing house. But nope, she does tell Charlie how she feels and he tells her, but she moves on, returning to her home. We still get the happy ending, though, because Libby decides to run the store, Charlie’s dad recovers from his stroke, and Charlie comes back to the city to live happily ever-after with Nora.

If there’s two minor criticisms I have of Henry’s book, which is bound to happen with romance novels — after all, again, she spends much of the novel satirizing them herself! — is that a.) Nora and Charlie only knew each other for three-ish weeks before they fell in love, and often that “love” feels more like lust, but again, to Henry’s credit, she riffs on this specific trope! and b.) maybe this is my own weird hangup, but I don’t want someone, even my lover, holding my face and/or jaw. Nora and Charlie are constantly doing this to each other! Hands off of my face, please! I digress …

Henry’s so, so good at her craft, at making me care about her characters, at making me read a nearly 400-page rom-com book and it not feeling remotely that long, at making me laugh, feel, and think. What a marvelous, lovely feat of writing.