The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
Year: 2019
Author: Abbi Waxman
Length: 352 pages
***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY***
I’m not sure if The Bookish Life of Nina Hill is a millennial romantic comedy or a hipster romantic comedy. Either way, I did enjoy reading it, mostly because the formula for this genre is relatively straightforward and predictable. It probably helped that I could relate to the main character, or at least her introverted nature. The supporting characters were a bit quirky and fun as well which just added to the entertaining nature of the narrative. At the very least, I could see something like this becoming a movie, even if it was only released on cable television.
Since the copy of this book I read was an advanced reader copy, I’m sure some of the errata like missing book images at several section breaks and a few backward quotes near the end will be fixed for the final product. Content-wise, I did find the “girl talk” earlier in the book to be a bit more adult than the eventual romance that happens, which I suppose is par for the course with this type of genre: you can talk about it, but leave explicit descriptions in the space between sections. Furthermore, there were many times where the POV shifted back and forth between two characters on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis that left me with a little bit of POV whiplash.
There were plenty of themes and ideas explored in this book that I felt were well done, including descriptions of anxiety and the general feel of Southern California. Even with a large cast of supporting characters, most of the interactions felt natural and advanced the story (with an exception or two here and there). And while I could predict the majority of the ending from about half-way through the book, the few twists and turns leading to this conclusion were satisfying, if not merely delaying the inevitable.
A charming hipster/millennial romantic comedy, I give The Bookish Life of Nina Hill 4.0 stars out of 5.
