I just reviewed The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published July 25, 2023.

This book was confusing and disjointed. Marie-Jeanne has a unique ability to see Love in other people. She uses this when she tries to match books to the person. That was the part I was interested in. But there are other virtues (that appear capitalized like characters) that show up. There is a talking Olive Tree. And there are really long run-on sentences.

This was a slow, confusing and painful read and not at all what I was expecting. Sadly I cannot recommend it.

I found out that this is a companion book to “The Little Paris Bookstore,” which I haven’t read, though I think this book can be read as a stand-alone. This book has a lot of descriptions (a bit too poetic for my taste), but it’s a lot thin on plot. From the title, I thought there would be a bit more discussion about books and the people who read them but it seemed, since this book is narrated by “Love,” more about, well, love and soulmates. While this book is lovely and thoughtful, this book didn’t deliver for me with more of a solid storyline and solid characters. I wish I’d liked this book more than I did.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A sweet novel about found families and beloved books.

Thank you to the author and publisher for providing me with a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I was immediately attracted to this book from the title and was pleased to have the opportunity to read it. I found the characters to be likable and ones I could connect to from the start. I cared about them and wanted to see what would happen. I loved the narrative from Love and the idea of emotions being a character in the story. It was so creative and enjoyable. I really liked Marie-Jeane who was touched by Love as an infant after losing both parents. Love watches her grow in her foster home and realizes his touch left her with the ability to see love growing in others. Creative, enjoyable read

With Love as the narrator, Nina George takes the reader to remote France during the 1960s in The Little Village of Book Lovers. As an infant Marie-Jeanne has an encounter with Love which enables her to see the light that Love has left on people. As she grows up, she helps her foster father start a mobile library that travels through the small villages around Lyons. She can help people find their soul mates. but can she find someone she can love?

Thank you to @netgalley and @BallatineRandomHouse for this ARC. Marie-Jeanne is born into love. She is touched by love as an infant and now helps others see love between themselves. When her foster dad starts a bookmobile, she finds a way to connect people. Sweet story! #TheLittleVilaggeofBookLovers #NinaGeorge #July2023 #BallatineBooks

Wonderful feel good read. Will be perfect for summer. I actually enjoyed this more than Littke Paris Bookshop. The characters felt more developed and I appreciated this plot live more than those in the first book.

While I was excited to read this book based on the description and author, I didn't enjoy it as much as, The Little Paris Bookshop.

If you’ve ever read Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop, you’re going to want to preorder this book! The main character in The Little Paris Bookshop, Perdu, had an all-time favorite (fictional) book, & Nina George wrote THAT book - we can now experience what Perdu was so obsessed with!!!

Marie-Jeanne is a young girl in the countryside of France in the 1960’s & can see glowing spots on people - when they connect with glowing spots on others that means that they’re meant to be together. Marie-Jeanne joins the family business, which is a revolutionary mobile library - her foster father delivers books in his truck & Marie-Jeanne does the same but on horseback (very The Giver of Stars or The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, but French). She eventually decides that she needs to help these people with connecting glow spots find each other, & the way to do that is through books - and maybe somewhere along the way she’ll be able to find her own true love.

I will say that this book may be a little hard to get into (maybe it has to do with the translation, who knows?) with the format of Love being an actual character watching over Marie-Jeanne, but the further I got into it the more it grew on me. I love the idea that books can be medicine for the soul, & that they can bring people together. The character development & influence that Marie-Jeanne has on the people in her village is beautiful.

Thank you to NetGalley & Ballantine in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free e-arc of this book through Netgalley.
I adore books about book shops and bookmobiles. This book has a bit of fantasy and reminded me a little of the Pixar movie "Inside Out" with Love, Fate, Death, etc. being characters in portions of the book. I thought it was creative and different. I had to be in the right mood to read about it, but I enjoyed it overall.

This book is a companion book to "The Little Paris Bookstore, "which I haven't read but this book. can be read on its own. This is a parable laden book full of poetic descriptions and discussions about fate and love but the actual plot is a little thin. Marie-Jeanne was just a small baby when her caretaker, her grandmother was visited by death. Death, like Love and Fate are actual characters in the novel and "Love" is the main narrator. Marie-Jeanne was touched by love in a special way which allowed her to see lights in people, lights that indicated someone or something that was special to that person. We meet a number of characters is the small French village the girl lives in before her foster father Francis thinks of the idea of a traveling book store.

The mentioning of books is always a great thing but it seemed like people in these villages never heard of reading books especially the idea that women and young girls could read. Since the book is set in 1969, I found the idea that women didn't read, to be very odd; by the 1960's people had been reading for centuries. When these various, farmers, milk man, etc begin to read they immediately choose books by Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka which again seemed puzzling. During this time when Marie-Jeanne and her foster father are making deliveries, she notices many people have lights on their fingers or lips. Love tells us these are places where people will later find pleasure. Love also tells us twice that the light will never, ever appear on a person's backside. Why was this assertion necessary?

The majority of the novel is about match making; there seems to be many characters who are pining for their true love but refuse to leave their houses to find their person. Marie-Jeanne along with some other characters have to resort to some book club salons to force people to be in the same room with someone they are fated to find. I think not everyone will agree with the narrator's insisting that everyone has a true soul mate. There is one gay character in the book but she assures the readers she loves without lust and would never sleep in the same bed as her beloved. I don't know why this character was added to the book and then made to feel different from the others. I did enjoy the beautiful descriptions of the valleys of lavender fields, the wonderful dishes cooked by Elsa, and mentions of various books. I just wish the books would have been the main focus instead of soul mates. Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book and to the publisher for granting my wish for an early read of this ARC in exchange for a review.

I loved The Little Paris Bookshop and recommended it to our library book club in 2016 (although I liked it more the first time I read it than the second). I know that Nina George is a famous author (although I didn’t know how well regarded she was before reading About the Author at the end of the book).

Evidently The Little Village of Book Lover is (a bit of) a prequel to The Little Paris Bookshop. This wasn’t my favorite book. What really drove me (absolutely) crazy when reading The Little Village of Book Lovers was the (endless) adjectives. “a village where cats prowled the street that curled around the church and explored the vineyards and lush, flowering meadows, the olive groves, lavender fields and tree nurseries.” “longed for something more picturesque, more dramatic, more sentimental. They ate well; slept for a long time; dreamed different, more intensive, more nonsensical, and more colorful dreams; …” This one was my favorite though, “… she huddled closer to the surf-white flank of the large, warm, breathing horse.” (Who knew … warm AND breathing?!?! Never would have guessed.)

I refuse to rate books that I don’t finish. It took me a while. I finished all 272 pages. I had expected more (well more than the repetition of “more” (see above) ).

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to revive The Little Village of Book Lovers in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Nina George and the publisher Ballantine Books. Publication Date is July 25, 2023.

This one just didn't work for me.

After thoroughly enjoying the Little Paris Book Shop by Nina George, I looked forward to her latest. This novel reads somewhat like a translated parable. Told from the point of view of Love, who sometimes refers to such characters such as Fate and Chaos as well as the old olive tree, the story centers around Marie-Jeanne and her adopted parents Francis and Elsa and their lives in rural France. After a slow start, the tale gathers momentum when Francis starts a traveling library and many in the community and environs become book enthusiasts. The relationships that grow from the devotion to reading are sweet, if somewhat predictable. For bibliophiles willing to take time for the abstractions narrated by Love, this may be a rewarding effort.

This book made me feel happy, sad, hopeful, and inspired. It reminded me of why I love reading and how books can be a source of comfort and joy. It also made me want to visit France and see the places that Jean Perdu visited! This book is a gem and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves books!

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ebook ARC!

The Little Village of Book Lovers

I have read hundreds of books in my half-century on this planet. This is the first one I ever recall wanting to restart as soon as I finished. The prose is lyrical, magical and filled with words. I didn’t want this book to end.

It is referenced as a sequel to the 2013 “The Little Paris Bookshop”. The two novels aren’t literally connected, but there is an explanation given as to their relationship. (Think of it as a “post-credits” scene. Don’t leave early!)

I refuse to discuss the plot. That is because I don’t want to short-change anyone of even one word of this experience. If I had to explain it, I would say it is part Jane Austen’s “Emma” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, with part of Aesop thrown in for good measure. It defies genre.

This was written for those who voraciously devour vocabulary. Those who love the lexicon. Those who examine the evolution (or devolution) of language. The word “alchemy” is mentioned frequently, with substantive reason. I found myself taking photos of paragraphs, hoarding them until the July publication date. (I will be buying two copies of this book upon release - one for me and one to pass to a friend.)

I read this book slowly. The chapter titles are expansive and hysterical. It is a book to be savored. While reading, I felt as if I was in a library with tall shelves (ladder included), endless food, an exorbitant bathroom and ubiquitous candles which never closed. Nina George is now firmly on my “must read” list.

If I had to describe the book in one word it would be “charming”. Or maybe “entrancing”. Or “wistful”. Or “dreamy”. But then again, I don’t really have the words to properly describe it, as you can see from this review!

Thank you beyond words to NetGalley for giving me access to this ARC. I fully expect this to be the best book I read in 2023. July cannot arrive soon enough so that I can discuss this with others!

Marie-Jeanne is touched by Love as an infant and can thus see the marks of Love on the people around her. How will this gift effect those in her small French village. Can she help people make the connections of love? will she be able to find her own love? Meantime she spreads the love of books to her village and the surrounding countryside. I enjoyed this book but had to get used to Love and other qualities being characters.
This is a review of an e-Galley provided by NetGalley.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. I have enjoyed some of George's previously works and any book about a Book Lover is an auto read in my book. However, I think I had my expectations set too high for this one. It started out great and atmospheric, but I could not get used to the use of Fate etc being used as characters. It really stunted my reading of the story.

The premise of this book sounds very good. Unfortunately it was just not for me. This is the first Nina George book I read, I will give an opportunity to The Little Paris Bookshop, maybe that will be more for me.

I was SO excited for the premise of this book but it just fell flat for me. I had a difficult time getting into it, and despite giving it a few weeks it has just not been a book I can bring myself to reach for. This is a book for those who love the writing in a book - if you need a little something more to hold your interest, it may not be for you.

The Little Village of Book Lovers has the lush detail, beautiful writing, and emotional depth I've come to expect of Nina George. But until about the 40% mark, I wasn't sure where it was going. There didn't seem to be much of a plot, and I was confused when Love (yes, love is a character in the story) would randomly narrate a chapter here and there, philosophizing about its importance and unpredictability. Love tells the reader how young Marie-Jeanne is the only person who can see love in others as shapes and points of light, but she never sees it in herself. In other chapters the point of view is omniscient or, sometimes, that of an olive tree. The book seemed disjointed, and I wasn't sure I could hold on until the end.

BUT, then things started to come together. Marie-Jeanne's father becomes enamored of books when he delivers them to a local bookshop as part of his delivery business. Suddenly he decides that what the village needs is a mobile book lending service, and he willingly takes on the assignment. Although he faces resistance at first, soon the locals see changes in their lives as a result. The story focuses specifically on couples who resist being together even though they are clearly meant for each other, couples who are together but haven't found ways to fully express their love (including Marie-Jeanne's foster parents) and those who haven't yet met the person who is destined to be their life partner.

The author mentioned this book in her 2015 novel, The Little Paris Bookshop, and she says she felt obligated to actually write it for the fans of that book. I would say that she succeeded for those who are willing to read on after what might feel plotless and scattered to discover the riches of the remaining 60% of the story.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the opportunity to read and review this book.