This is one I’m going to keep short because the story didn’t live up to the idea behind this book. It felt like a lot of run on sentences/ramblings of my grampa when he started a story and ended up somewhere completely different than you would have expected it to go 😂 I think it’s meant to be an off the wall comedy, and I guess in some ways it is, but it’s more off the wall than comedy.
Sophie runs a bookstore with her employees and now that her husband has passed, she’s left feeling a bit adrift and overwhelmed. The employees are all young and have new ideas and while she knows they’re valid, she’s not sure what to make of them because they mean change. The biggest change is the Querk vacuum. There’s a lot about the vacuum. Be prepared for it. I think the highlight is the pet turtle that rides around on the roomba. There’s a sentence you don’t write very often.
Thanks to Harper Muse and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my review.

Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐
Bookish People by Susan J. Coll is a light, humorous bookish book that takes place in a large bookstore in Washington, D.C.

Sophie Bernstein owns a large bookstore in DC and is ready to call it quits and just hide. She’s still mourning for her husband, she’s frustrated with her only son’s life choices and she’s about to lose her manager as he pursues a law degree. She just wants to hide from life, in a small hidden room in the bookstore.

Clemi, Sophie’s event coordinator for the bookstore has booked Raymond Chaucer, a controversial poet for an event in the store. Raymond has been accused in the media of killing his wife, however, he has not been charged with murder by the police. Most of his events were canceled because of security reasons, and no other bookstore wants to be associated with a possible murderer.

Sophie asks Clemi to cancel Raymond’s book event, but, Clemi can’t bring herself to cancel because she has other reasons for wanting to see the famous poet. She decides to hire extra security for the event, but that also backfires. Will Sophie find peace in her little room? Will the author event be successful?

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I love a bookish book, but this one was slow to get into. First of all, there was a lot going on in this book, and it was difficult to keep track of all the issues of these characters. Second was the characters themselves. I only found one character that I was rooting for, and that was a tortoise named Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The other characters all were too self-involved or just not sympathetic. I can understand that we don’t always like every character, but I would have wanted some more relatable and sympathetic characters in a book of this genre, that is marketed as a rom-com.

After a slow and somewhat confusing start, the story did pick up a bit and the ending was funny and satisfying. Kurt, the tortoise, was really the star of this book, in my opinion! I did enjoy the bookstore and the descriptions of the store and some of the customers. I’m glad I read the book, as I found it overall a good book.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I really wanted to love this book based off the cover alone. The cover is what drew me in first and then the description sounded good.
However, I did have a hard time getting into this book. There was alot going on at once with many different side stories. I had a hard time keeping track. I also didn’t get very commited to any of the characters.
The story follows a woman named Sophie who owned a bookstore in Washington DC. She is struggling with the recent loss of her husband. The recent news stories and protest really have her on edge. She decides she wants to live in the bookstore where there is a secret hide away. She packs her things to slowly move in.
Aside from that, Clemi, the event coordinator books a controversial poet to come the store. There had been riots and protests at each bookstore around the country because of this poet so every store was cancelling his event…except Clemi. She believes the poet is her father so she is determined to find out.
I did enjoy the daily report of random things that have happened around the bookstore. The vaccum cleaner update was my favorite, but this was not enough to keep me captivated in the story.
Thank you to Netgalley & Harper Muse for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately, I am unable to finish reading "Bookish People" at this time. I've tried downloading the digital copy through Kindle, Pocketbook and NetGalley Shelf, but all of the apps have the Harper Muse logo appear hugely in the middle of almost every page. It splits up paragraphs and is incredibly distracting. I'm going to try to get a physical arc so I can complete the book and update my review at a later time.

Thank you to the author, Harper Muse and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A book about books, a bookstore and people who love books - should be completely my jam, but I had trouble connecting with this one. The beginning was dark and depressing, and that atmosphere kept popping up at odd moments. Yes, there was a lot of madcap humor, but also a lot of confusion, uncertainty, strange tangents and utter chaos too. The constantly changing POVs didn't help, nor did the contradiction between the impression given of a crumbling independent bookstore on its last legs, and the huge volume of books being ordered. Overall, a bit of a hot mess, although very funny in parts.

I so so rarely dnf because i believe in giving all books a chance. Mainly because writers take sooo long to pen down their stories, it is the least qe readers can do right? But for this one and for the sake of my not falling into a slump, i actually DNF-ed. Sadly.

I mean, the beautiful cover and premise of a story within a bookstore totally sucked you in. About a middle aged woman who owns an independent bookstore and who recently lost her husband, losing her drive for life and for running her business. Insert her event's manager who seem to have alot going on in her life too. Main plot is basically about how they were supposed to cancel a booktour of a scandalous and controversial poet but things took a different turn somewhat.

So i don't know what happened in the end because where i left off, about 60% into the book, nothing and everything was happening all at once. Nothing pertaining to the main plot but everything else that involved a truckload of sub characters was going on. The writing in a way has this messiness like Backman, where he can talk about 652 things at one go in one chapter but you totally can feel it. However, this messiness here didn't work out. I couldn't get my mind into what was happening at all.

I was very excited about Bookish People as I am loving the new book store theme novels being published right now. Unfortunately, this book was not one that grabbed my attention and the number of storylines introduced in beginning made it hard for me to follow storyline. I did not finish this one, but hope others enjoy it more.

I really had very high expectations for this book. Fantastic title and cover. What's not to love about a novel set in a bookstore. But this was flat, so flat. The pacing and timeline were all over the place. For me, the two main characters were not likeable at all. Way too long for a story that was all over the place. Just a bad combination overall, when I thought this book was going to be a homerun.
Nevertheless, I am grateful to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read Bookish People in exchange for my honest review.

3 ⭐️

All of those are pretty much for the cover. I really struggled with the writing style and ended up DNFing because I could not get into.

Firstly, the cover of this novel was so cute. I had very high hopes for this novel because of it. The title in itself is self explanatory for any book lover. However the story’s plot is a little complicated. Set in Washington DC as an independent bookstore. Sophie is the owner and she doesn’t seem to be feeling it anymore.
The writing style was difficult to follow for myself as it isn’t in my preferred way plus there is a lot of stuff going on at the one time which makes it confusing however I enjoyed some elements of this novel as the characters are well developed to an extent as they each have their own personality.

I really do like the book cover and I do like the plot of the story--Sophie Bernstein is a grieving widow who owns an independent bookstore in the DC area. Raymond Chaucier is a novelist whose book tour was canceled when he was blamed for his wife's suicide. Sophie's bookstore was the only store that will host the book tour. But when Sophie asks Clemi to cancel the tour, Clemi suscpect that Raymond maybe her biological father...

Though I liked the plot, reading this book to me felt like a heavy load. Too many characters which left me confused about the whole story as a result, which also made me bored and confused throughout the story. I wasn't sure who is the actual main character in the story. This wasn't as funny as it was labeled to be. Overall, I couldn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped it would, which actually lowered the expectations of this book and the rating. Sadly worth only 2.5 stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

Give me all the books about people loving books! I really enjoyed this one and was loving the narrator! highly recommend.

Sophie Bernstein loves her bookstore but after her husband dies and her manager quits to move on, she starts to unravel. She begins obsessing over finding a safe place to hunker down while the comedy of errors that is running a bookstore surround her. I loved this book for its characters, the way life just continues to move on, and the fact that everyone seems to have their own little secrets and ways of coping.

Thanks NetGalley, Harper Muse and Susan Coll for a copy to review.
It took me a while to get into it but eventually it hooked me into the bookstore life and its characters ( humans, reptiles and vacuum cleaners)!
I liked it

I picked this book up because I like bookish type people and because the cover is so cute. Also, I'm a sucker for books about books. The setting is a very busy Washington, D.C. independent bookstore. Sophie Bernstein is the owner. She has run the bookstore for a long time and it seems her heart is no longer in it. She just wants to hide. There's a hidden room in the bookstore and she wants to move all her stuff into the room and just hide away from life and the busy bookstore. Clemi is the store's events coordinator and she books a controversial poet to come and speak. There hav ebeen protests and riots at other bookstores and all the US bookstores have cancelled his appearances. Clemi thinks the man might be her father, and she doesn't want to cancel even when Sophie tells her to do so. Jamal is the bookstore manager, but he is leaving for law school shortly so they will be shorthanded and need to replace him. Florence, an ex-employee who was fired, is causing problems. And there's an interested party who wants to buy the bookstore.

There's a lot going on in this book and it's somewhat confusing as it goes back and forth between characters. There's an End-of-Day report at the end of each chapter that's chock full of strange things that happened a the bookstore. There's a pet tortoise, Kurt Vonnegut, who is owned jointly by Noah and Clemi who keeps smelling up the store. I enjoyed reading abou the tortoise. I also enjoyed the vacuum cleaner with a mind of it's own! All of the characters were quirky, and I usually really like quirky characters, but I don't know if it was too many or too much, but something about the book just didn't work for me.

Thanks to Harper Muse througth Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on September 2, 2022.

Sadly, I really struggled to get through this book. I had such high hopes based on the cover, title, and description- bookstores are one of my favorite settings for a novel. But it was just too dense and chaotic with too many characters all of whom I had a very hard time liking - or quite frankly caring about at all. I'm sure there's an audience out there that will love this book - it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Thank you to the author and publisher for an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Sadly this book was a DNF for me. The premise was so interesting but there was just to many small subplots and it created such a chaotic story. It was so frantic and all over the place, that I couldn’t follow it.

Unfortunately this became a DNF for me. I really wanted to love this book because I mean, how cute is that cover?! But unfortunately the formatting of this was really hard to read through. The Harper Muse logo was MASSIVE on every single page and led to me having a hard time reading. I based my star rating on what I did manage to push through and read.

Sad to report that this one didn’t work for me.

I couldn’t connect with the characters, the long chapters bored me and the internal monologues really didn’t work for me.

Unfortunately - this one didn’t work.

I was really excited for this book, the premise seemed interesting plus the title and cover are eye-catching. However, it is a struggle to push through the text based on the writing style. I also found it hard to connect with characters, which led me to DNF this one.

Thank you to Net Galley and Harper Muse for the ARC.