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(Use uma ferramenta de IA, como o Chat GPT, para te ajudar a entender o vocabulário novo)
I’ve recently finished reading this book. I took it up because, first, I saw it being highly recommended by a few book influencers that I follow as “a very nice read”, second, because of its title and synopsis – which girl reader would not be drawn to a title like this? 😆 – third, because I’ve already read another book by the same author, titled People We Meet on Vacation and I liked it, fourth, because it is categorized as a “feel-good” kind of book and I felt like I needed to read something like that, and fifth, because I wanted to read a novel in English, since the last novel I had read was in Portuguese.
What is the book about?
It’s a contemporary romance novel set in two places in the USA: the bustling New York City and a fictional picturesque town called Sunshine Falls, in North Carolina.
It tells the story of a successful career-driven literary agent called Nora Stephens, who’s very much in love with her comfortable city life in New York, but who, on the other hand, has had pretty bad luck in her love life, partly because of her lack of commitment to it.
According to her own perception, she seems to always play the role of the villain in romantic comedies: the ambitious cold-hearted city woman who gets dumped by the leading man in order for him to live his true love story in a small town with the perfectly simple, pretty, and loving girl.
At the end of the book, in the Behind the Book section, the author says that her intention when she chose to write this book was to explore that “villain” character that she always sees in rom-coms. She wanted to show that those “villains” are just as human as everybody else, with their own stories, traumas, feelings, dreams, and vulnerability hidden behind the icy mask they wear.
Nora has a sister who she loves dearly and who’s the only person that is more important to her than her career. They have a very close relationship, but right at the beginning of the book, her sister starts to act distant and that worries Nora very much. “Maybe it’s because she’s reaching the end of her pregnancy with her third child?” – she thinks.
One day, her sister Libby, who, by the way, is a hopeless romantic, asks Nora to go with her on a vacation to a cute small town in North Carolina – which is the setting of one of her favorite romantic novels – for a month. For Nora, it seems like that’s her sister’s final wish before facing the hardships that await her after the new baby is born.
Despite being very averse to leaving her beloved hectic New York and her work, even for a short time, she agrees to go and spend one month with her sister there. She believes she’ll be able to figure out what’s going on with her sister and strengthen their bond back to normal during that time together.
In Sunshine Falls, Nora unexpectedly runs into Charlie Lastra, a book editor who she once had a business meeting with in New York and who had left a very bad first impression on her. They keep running into each other in that small town, which allows them to get to know one another better.
As the story unfolds, you learn more about Nora as she navigates her relationship with her sister, who’s so different from her, and that man she wished she would never have to meet again. And you also get to spend your time with the characters in that quaint little town surrounded by gorgeous nature in the middle of the summer season, especially in its bookshop.
Book Lovers aims to explore the topics of family relationships—especially between sisters and between parents and children—, romantic relationships, past traumas, navigating the hardships of adult life, being true to yourself, learning to love yourself exactly the way you are, and the fact that you might be at the same time the “villain” in one person’s story and the “beloved character” in another’s.
So, how did I like the book?
I enjoyed it. It was a nice summer read. In my opinion, it delivered what the author set out to do. There’s humor, heartache, love and a few steamy scenes, reflections about life, and what everybody expects to find in this book: bookshops and conversations about books.
It accompanied me in my hot summer days here in Japan when, after lunch, all I wanted to do was close the curtains to keep the sunlight from heating up my house even more, and lie down in bed to rest for a bit.
For around a month, I followed the same routine of finishing lunch, taking my dishes to the sink, closing the curtains, putting the fan next to my bed, and settling in with the book in my hands and a cold drink on my bedside table.
Emily’s writing is really good! It’s so smooth that it’s easy to immerse yourself in the story without paying much attention to how it’s written. I literally felt like spending a month with Nora in Sunshine Falls.
The story is heartwarming and the exchange between the characters made me laugh and cry a few times. And Nora’s reflections made me think about my own life.
All in all, it was a good read, but nothing particularly extraordinary. And that’s ok. Not all books need to hook you so much that you feel like you can’t do anything but read it. I really like that feeling, though. 😆
Some books are just meant to help you relax with a feel-good story that transports you to another place.
What did I miss in it? I missed feeling strong emotions. For me, that’s the best part about reading novels.😁
You know when you’ve just read a part of a book that leaves you speechless and you want to read that same part two or three times because of all the emotion that it evokes? I was expecting to go through that while reading this book, but it happened just once at the very end.
I also missed something in the main characters, Nora and Charlie, that I can’t really put my finger on. I don’t know if there is really something missing in them or is it just me not being able to relate to them. 😆
I think I would give it 3 stars out of 5, which, for me, means “good”.
Please bear in mind that your opinion of it might be completely different from mine. This book might sweep you off your feet. Who knows? It all depends on your personality, life experiences, expectations, and even your current moment.
If you feel attracted by the synopsis of the book, I’d recommend that you give it a try. 😉
Practice your English by reading books
Something I always tell my students is that we need to consume content that interests us in English in order to develop our skills in the language. I love reading books, so, for me, this is one of the most enjoyable ways for me to consume content in English.
I feel a rush of dopamine every time I encounter a word, a collocation, or an expression in the book that I find very useful and hadn’t known before.
Two examples of vocabulary that I learned from reading this book that come to mind right now are “for what it’s worth”, which means “se é que vale alguma coisa”, and “foldout couch”, which means “sofá cama”.
I read this book on Kindle on my tablet and I used two highlight colors: blue for new vocabulary or words I know but don’t usually use, and yellow for important messages I might want to revisit in the future.
I don’t look up every word or expression I don’t know in the dictionary. I only do that with the ones that interest me. That makes the process of learning the new vocabulary much more enjoyable, because I only focus on what feels useful and meaningful to me.
Another thing I like to do, and that I also recommend to my students, is reading the book aloud.
When I started doing it, I noticed how helpful it was to practice my pronunciation, linking sounds, intonation, and rhythm. I don’t always read aloud, though. I only do that when I feel like doing it, otherwise it would be a chore instead of an enjoyable experience.
Finally, I also like to produce something based on the book in order to organize my thoughts around what I’ve just read and also to practice my productive skills: writing and/or speaking.
Right now, I’m practicing my writing skills by writing this article. Writing it is helping me to practice putting words together to convey a message, and that is strengthening my vocabulary memory.
I might also record a video about this book in a few days, which will help me to improve my fluency, because it will strengthen both the mental and physical pathways I use when speaking the language.
I recommend that you do something similar. Try to produce some kind of content about the books you read. It could be a post on social media, an entry in your journal, a conversation with friends, a review on the app where you bought the book or in the comments of a video about it. There are good options for all tastes. You just need to pick your preferred option for that moment.
Final considerations
I hope that you enjoyed reading this book review and that it inspired you to read more books in English. 😊
This one I’ve read is the original version, but there are abridged editions of many great books adapted for different English levels. They are called graded readers. I recommend that you check the collections below:
- Oxford Bookworms Library
- Penguin Readers (Penguin Random House / Pearson)
- Cambridge English Readers (Cambridge University Press)
- Macmillan Readers (Macmillan Education)
- Collins ELT Readers (Collins)
- Heinle Cengage Readers (National Geographic Learning / Cengage)
If you feel like letting me know about your opinion on this article or on the book, feel free to leave a comment. I love to read your comments!
See you in the next article!
Take care,
Eliana Capiotto
Do you have 10 more minutes to practice your English by reading another post? Yes? So check out my previous post, about my four-legged babies, by clicking here.
Eliana Capiotto is a Brazilian teacher of English currently based in Japan. She is the founder and director of an online English school called Pothos, where she works alongside 6 other teachers. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Translation and Interpretations Portuguese/English from Uninove, is a CELTA and CAE holder, and she has an article published in a journal from USP called Tradterm (you can check it out here).
Eliana is passionate about learning and sharing knowledge, and she enjoys challenging the status quo. She’s also a proud mom of two rescued dogs, loves romantic novels, films, and series (including a few K-dramas), tries to be as vegan as she can, is a crier, and considers breakfast and afternoon coffee time her favorite meals. She loves hiking and is currently studying the environment and ways we can prevent its collapse.
Instagram account: @elianacapiotto_ingles