Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Fawn is the owner of an established book shop, and this this novel chronicles a year of her life and that of the shop. The narrative is told through a series of emails, shop reviews and blog posts, which does make for rather a quick read. Bearing that in mind, I still found it about 40% too long.
The problem with this novel was the main character and her development. The protagonist really has very few redeeming features – Fawn is argumentative, deceptive and unresponsive to the kindness of others. However, she’s not that bad that she’s a real villain, she’s just awkward and unrelenting. The character arc is also flawed, with Fawn’s redemption being sudden but for no apparent reason. I found the other characters to be equally unlikeable as they were so unrealistic, mainly because they were just so insipidly nice and let Fawn get away with anything she wanted to.
Whilst inaccurately=named book is perhaps styled on comical epistolary novels such as The Diaries of Adrian Mole or Bridget Jones’ Diaries, this one really fell flat in terms of its humour. I also got really fed up with hearing about cats, damp and broken things, but that may just be me.
On the positive side, this book is not badly written per se, and was actually quite readable as long as you’re not too concerned about characters or plot development – these are biggies for me though, hence the low rating.
I’ve given it 2 out of 5.
Wordy Witterings 