Not Quite by the Book by Julie Hatcher

  

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Romance, Contemporary Romance
Content: Strong Language

 

A bookstore owner discovers that life as a recluse isn’t for everyone in this sharp yet sweet novel about how sometimes you need to abandon the quest for love to find your true passion.

Emma Rini is in a rut so deep she could shelve books there. While her sister awaits her first baby, and her parents kick off retirement with vow renewals and travel, Emma stays put among the stacks of the family bookshop.

In fact, she can’t remember the last time she took a vacation. Or had a romance that hovered above disappointing. When her parents assume she’ll take over the shop for them without a break, she realizes she needs to get away—back to the nineteenth century. Channeling her favorite poet recluse, Emily Dickinson, Emma rents a crumbling manor house outside Amherst where she can learn how to be quietly, blissfully alone.

But becoming a world-weary spinster isn’t easy. She can’t start a fire or reason with the bunnies that are destroying the garden. She finds herself sparring constantly with the grumpy-hot architect who is renovating the manor. And then there’s the secret admirer who keeps sending her complicated floral messages…

No matter what she does, the outside world keeps knocking, and Emma starts to dream about the future. Will she forgo love for the family legacy? And will she shrink away or become the sort of bold person fortune favors?

 

Every time I come across a book that includes a book store or books in general I have high hopes that it's going to be great. More often than not I end up being disappointed. This one was ok in the beginning but before I got even halfway through it started to drag. The main character, Emma had this obsession with Emily Dickinson that got old fast. I got really tired of reading what Emily did, or wrote, or might have thought. I wanted to know what Emma thought, but Emma wouldn't trust herself. I get that she was in a rut in her life and was unhappy, but I thought that Emma was ridiculous to mistake the love of an author's works with having anything in common with the author. She quickly learns that she doesn't but still keeps trying to turn herself into Emily Dickinson anyway. 

It would have been much more logical for Emma to have booked a vacation somewhere far away to just relax and recharge. Instead she's only 40 miles from home trying to live the life of someone from the past for 6 weeks. And speaking of 40 miles, why do some people in this book act like it's a huge distance? It irritated me that her family acted like she was going to be on the other side of the world. But then, a lot of things irritated me about both Emma and her family. That being said, I liked the growth Emma experienced in the book in regards to herself and her family. I especially liked some of the realizations she came to about the other people in her family after she learned their perspectives on things. 

Now for my biggest gripe, and that would be how the romance was handled. What could have been a sweet romance ended up being incredibly frustrating, so much so that I felt like throwing the book at the wall a few times. There was so much needless secrecy and drama in this book. Just talk to each other for gosh sakes! It didn't make sense that Davis withheld the things from her that he withheld. For me, there was never a good enough reason given for why he went about things the way he did. Add on top of that the fact that Emma was so obtuse. There were some very obvious clues staring her in the face throughout the book but she couldn't see them. Overall, I didn't think Emma and Davis behaved the way real people would have.