A wonderful story about an encounter with a list of library books leads to an unlikely friendship. Mukesh is a widower trying to relate to his granddaughter who is always reading. Aleisha has a summer job at the library but isn't thrilled to be there. When Mukesh goes to the library, Aleisha give his the list. A testiment to how books connect us. And, how fiction can help them to escape and make sense of everyday life. It shows the power of books. It made me think about my personal reading list.

I have already ordered copies to give as gifts. Character driven novel centered around books... what could be better? This has the same feel as Authenticity Project and Anxious People, two other books I have loved this year.

The Reading List is a lovely story that is perfect for book lovers. It centers around a list of books that has been found by a variety of people in a community. Reading the books on the list seems to come at the perfect time for each person and also bonds members of the neighborhood. It's a heartwarming story.

The Reading List is an Interesting representation of a book about books. The mysterious "List" intrigues each person who finds it. Each reader finds lessons he can relate to and thinks of people he knows within the books' characters. A Wonderful read!

As a librarian, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the connections forged by characters over books..The alternating viewpoints from chapter to chapter made the book easy to start and stop as needed without getting lost. The ending definitely rugged at .my heartstrings. Thank you, Netgalley and HarperCollins, for the digital eARC!

I absolutely adored this book. The story was so heart wrenching. I loved the diversity that was portrayed across culture, race, and age. Learning about each character's background and how literature helped them through their individual grief was heartwarming. It was wonderful to follow their friendship stemmed from a shared love of the same books and how the two main characters were able to support each other despite their differences. Just a truly beautiful story about the power of books, empathy, and friendship. I would not put this in my library solely because I am a middle school librarian. I would recommend it for high school, public, and personal libraries.

Mukesh and Aleisha are adorable, and nothing warms this librarian's heart like a book about the pleasures and magic of reading. So even though it's a trope I'm a sucker for, I also think this is a wonderful book for any relationship readers out there looking for a title that's not just about middle class white women.

All the feels in this story... We are introduced to Mukesh, a widower isolated and far from living his fullest 2 years after the love of his life passes away. One day he takes a gamble and picks up a book, having never been a reader before, but knowing how his wife, Naina, loved reading every evening.

We're then connected with Aleisha, caretaker of her mother alongside her adult brother, who has taken up a job at the library. The stress of her situation weighs upon her and translates into how she interacts with others.

As they and others are connected, you feel joy, triumph, sorrow and pain - opening yourself up to relationships is never easy, but along with the risk, what can you gain?

I truly enjoyed this read for the empathy and depth - as I got into it, I was looking forward to each time I would return - and it didn't take that long to do so!

Content Warnings: Death; Cancer; Suicide; Mental Illness

Thank you to William Morrow and Custom House and to Netgalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

From Sara Nisha Adams comes THE READING LIST, a heartwarming and magical debut about a small-town library and the life-changing friendships built there.

Mukesh Patel has been living in a “Time of Eternal Quiet” following the death of his beloved wife, Naina, a few years ago. He takes care of himself well enough --- he cooks and remembers bin day almost every week, and when his memory fails him, one of his three daughters always pops up to help him out. But what he truly misses is the comfort his wife provided and the joy he felt whenever he looked over to see her reading, shushing him for interrupting to tell her a tidbit from whichever documentary he was watching at the time. His granddaughter, Priya, seems to have inherited her grandmother’s love of reading, but Mukesh is now realizing that he never bothered to ask what exactly Naina was reading, and now he worries that he cannot access his granddaughter’s heart in the same way.

Across town, 17-year-old Aleisha is enduring her own private struggle as her mother is dealing with depression and agoraphobia. She and brother Aiden do their best to care for her and keep the house afloat, but her illness is weighing on them. Aleisha has quietly ended most of her friendships, and though she is studious and smart, she has never found a way to escape into a book like Aiden has, despite her new job at the library. Once a bustling zone of activity, it has fallen behind a bit in patronage. Aleisha has worked there long enough to recognize the regulars --- all five of them! --- but hasn’t yet found a reason to care about the library.

All of that changes when Aleisha encounters an old man desperate for stories. Mukesh has just read his wife’s last library book, THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, and wants to continue reading the books she loved (or could have loved) so he can remember what love feels like and be close to her again. After a contentious “meet-cute” of sorts, Mukesh runs from the library bemoaning the rude girl who works there, and Aleisha discovers a forgotten slip of paper with a list of books for those in need written on it: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, REBECCA, THE KITE RUNNER, LIFE OF PI, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, LITTLE WOMEN, BELOVED and A SUITABLE BOY. Ready for a change and possibly to make a connection, Aleisha finds Mukesh again and recommends Harper Lee's classic novel to him, kicking off a life-changing, world-altering friendship.

Divided into parts by each book on the reading list, and broken into chapters featuring Mukesh, Aleisha and a slew of other characters touched and changed by the library, THE READING LIST is an exquisite love letter to books, libraries and the lives lived in each of them. As the mysterious reading list changes hands and circulates through the library’s various patrons, each of them finds a lifeline in one of the books on the list. For Mukesh and Aleisha, these lifelines not only distract them from their grief and sorrows, they enable them to forge connections with the people closest to them, as well as strangers and new friends alike. Perhaps most touching is Mukesh’s nurturing of and finding solace in his precocious granddaughter, a bookish girl who is not afraid to ask questions but also reminds her grandfather that “she can’t know everything!”

There is probably not a book lover out there who doesn’t love a book about books and reading. But when I say that THE READING LIST is something special, I mean that it is the ultimate ode and love letter to the bonds created by a shared love of books, and the ways that reading opens us up to new experiences, perspectives and friendships. I love that Adams uses real, in-print books to propel her narrative forward. If you’ve read the book in question, you're able to trace the impact it might have; if you haven’t, you'll end that section with a new book for your TBR list.

THE READING LIST would make a tremendous book club pick due to its celebratory references to other popular works and because it is so ripe for discussion. Grief, mental illness, stagnation, family dysfunction and love each play a huge role in the book; while that’s quite the laundry list of themes, none of them are tossed in carelessly. Each and every character, poignant theme and, yes, book is given the full attention it deserves and a resoundingly satisfying story arc.

That this is Sara Nisha Adams’ first novel feels impossible until you realize that this is a writer who has cultivated a love of reading her whole life, someone who respects and admires the authors who came before her while bravely carving out her own niche in the literary world and, hopefully, on every library and bookstore shelf. Perfect for readers of Ann Hood's THE BOOK THAT MATTERS MOST and Kim Michele Richardson's THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK, THE READING LIST is an inspiring, unforgettable debut that will remind you why you love reading in the first place.

A book list plus a cast of characters at different stages of life, come together in The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, a book celebrating all things reading. When a widower visits his local library after the recent death of his wife, he finds a list of books that leads to many surprising connections in the community and beyond.
While there are many interesting titles and characters in this book, I truly enjoyed the stories with-in the story. Reading this highlighted the ways books make an impact on their readers and can create unexpected connections.

The Reading List is a beautifully written slice of life book about the bookish life by Sara Nisha Adams. Released 3rd Aug 2021 by Harper Collins on their William Morrow imprint, it's 384 pages and is available in most formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This was one of 2021's buzz books and rightfully so. It's compassionately written and full of book references and peopled with characters who engaged and interested me. I was drawn into the story and although sometimes the story felt a tiny bit movie-of-the-week-ish, I really was genuinely invested in the characters and felt a strong desire to find out how the story played out for them.

The author writes with a great deal of verisimilitude and it wasn't a huge stretch to imagine that parts of the story were at least inspired by her own life experiences. I love books about books, and this is a good one. The prose is unusually well written; often quite luminous. I am absolutely sure that it will soon be a major motion picture (I believe it's already optioned for film), but the story stands quite impressively well on its own merits. The author is talented and there's a surprising surety in the narrative which belies it as a debut effort.

Wonderfully written. Ever so slight nuances of a feel-good movie of the week vibe but not enough to detract from the overall quality of the work. Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this advanced copy.

This was a wonderfully rich debut about how books can bring people together and also help them heal by building relationships with fictional characters as well as people.

This is the story of Mukesh and Aleisha. Aleisha has taken summer job at the library at the suggestion of her older brother. Mukesh has lost his wife in the last 2 years and found a library book that is overdue and returns it. He is still struggling with this loss and his place in this new world. Returning the book begins their relationship and is a little bit of a rocky start. Aleisha tries to smooth this start by suggesting a book for him after she finds a list of books in one of the library books.

Aleisha and her bother are trying to care for their mentally ill mother and Aleisha finds that this reading list is a good escape from reality, but also a way to enrich her relationship with her mother on her good days. She and her brother take turns staying home with their mother to care for her.

Aleisha recommends the books from the reading list to Mukesh who learns reading is wonderful and transports you to new places. His wife was an avid reader and he feels like he is closer to her while he is reading. Reading also gives him an opportunity to build his relationship with his granddaughter who always read with her grandmother.

This was an enjoyable book that allowed you to see interpretation of the books from different people's eyes. Mukesh and Aleisha came together to try to increase patrons at the library because of important family members and their love for books.

I did enjoy this book but I think that overall, it was a little too sweet and too slow for me to love it. I felt that the struggling widower and "mad British mum" characters were a bit cliche and I wished the characters storylines were woven together a little more tightly earlier on in the book. But, this book has much love out there from many readers so I think it just wasn't for me. If anyone is looking for a heartwarming story with characters that are easy to like, this is the book for you.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC; my review is my honest opinion.

Received a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

A bittersweet story. I love books about books. This one follows characters as they navigate their lives when a list of books finds its way to them. I liked tracking in the order of where the list came and went. Some parts were painful to read but it demonstrates life as it truly is.

If you like heartwarming books about books, unlikely friendships, and curmudgeons, this one is for you!

The Reading List is a story of unlikely friends bonding through books. Alisha is a teenager who has a rough home life providing care for her mother with the help of her brother and works in a local library to help support the family. She doesn't particularly start off loving the job, but one day she finds a "reading list" and commits to checking out the books. Murkesh is a lonely Indian widower struggling to find a way in this world after losing his wife of fifty years. One day he finds a library book his wife never returned, The Time Traveler's Wife. He decides to read it because his wife loved books and he hopes to feel closer to her again by perhaps enjoying one of the last books she read. He ends up enjoying the book and comparing it in some ways to his own life. He begins visiting the library regularly and working his way through Alisha's found reading list with her. Along the way both they both develop a new love for reading, and begin to find themselves.

To me this one read like a love story to books and libraries (more so than another title I recently read). I loved how the main plot line coincided with the plots in the books on the reading list. The book served as a good reminder of why people love to read in the first place....being able to get lost in a story and experience perspectives different than our own. There is some sadness that flows throughout the story, but it ends on a high note with hope and wraps up the mystery of who wrote the list in the first place.

Enjoyed this book immensely. Premise was very interesting. Enjoyed seeing the development in the main characters from non-readers to readers intent on each book and looking forward to the next on the list. The progress of their relationships was also an important component. Was fun seeing the reactions to the books on the list. And also how the list circulated and affected more lives in the community. I think most avid readers would enjoy this book.

This book is wonderful, although to call Aleisha a librarian is a bit of a stretch! As an American, we would call Aleisha a page or a library assistant, never a librarian. In the beginning of the book, she gives all librarians a bad name. Although thankfully, she comes around and becomes a much better library assistant!

This story is about Aleisha and Mukesh. Two unlikely readers who share a book list and eventually a friendship. I really enjoyed this book and have recommended it to many people. The audiobook is also very good. And it is a real reading list, with real book. Read those and see if you have the same thoughts as the characters.

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this one up and probably didn’t start out in the best headspace for this genre, but a few chapters in, something clicked, and I found myself really, really enjoying these characters and the story.

Set in London, this book is about the development of an unlikely (platonic) relationship between Mukesh, a recent widower still at the beginning of mourning his wife, and Aleisha, a teenager working at the library with too much piled on her shoulders. The two of them – non-readers until this book begins – bond over reading books suggested on a list found hidden in the back of a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. As they read through the list of (mostly) classics, they find themselves working through their struggles and rebuilding their lives while relating to the characters they encounter along their reading adventures.

And while I thought this was going to be a lighter piece of fluff when I picked it up, it takes a more serious look at depression, loss, loneliness, and suicide, while developing characters that makes the reader want to become part of this fictional community.

Thank you to William Morrow and Custom House and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.

I loved the idea of this book - who wouldn’t love a book about a reading list of such wonderful books!
I was very invested in the stories of the two main characters. But throughout the book, minor characters were introduced and their stories either weren’t explained enough or seemed disconnected.