Katarina Bivald

Summary: Sara Lindquist has always preferred books to real life, and in consequence, while she's traveled to countless worlds in her reading, she hasn't done much in real life. When the bookshop she works at closes, she finally decides to do something big - she's going to travel from her city in Sweden to the tiny town of Broken Wheel, Iowa, to stay with Amy, a fellow booklover with whom Sara's been corresponding. However, upon arrival in Broken Wheel, she learns that Amy has recently passed show more away, and no one is entirely sure what to do with her. Broken Wheel is not a town that gets many - or any - tourists, and after the recent economic downturn, the town itself seems to be dying... and worse, no one in the town cares about books the way that Sara does. It's not exactly an ideal vacation destination, but as Sara slowly starts to get to know the inhabitants of the town - in person, that is; she'd seen them all through Amy's eyes via their correspondence - she starts to see Broken Wheel as somewhere she could belong, and somewhere she could have something to contribute. But will the town be as accepting of her?

Review: This is one of those books for people who love books that always feel a little bit like they're pandering to me (Hey, you like reading? Here's a book all about how wonderful reading is! You should read it!) but that also are generally pretty effective in their pandering, because I DO like reading, damn it. There were elements of this I really liked, but also some elements that didn't entirely work for me. The parts I liked primarily revolved around the secondary characters. Bivald populates the town of Broken Wheel with stock characters - the uptight religious lady, the brash and outspoken diner owner, the broken-spirited recovering alcoholic, the gossipy old ladies, the woman who got pregnant as a teenager, etc. - but then turns them into multidimensional people. I wound up liking most of the supporting characters as much as I liked Sara, and I actually cared about their storylines (which were surprisingly well developed, given their number and the relative size of the book) more than I cared about Sara's. Once of Sara's talents is putting the right book in the hands of the right reader, and I really enjoyed seeing which book she picked for each of the people of Broken Wheel, and how it changed them -- to me, that's really where the emotional core of the story lived.

However, this book is not content to just have the story be about Sara and the town as a whole -- there has to be a romantic element as well. In this case, it's Tom, who is bullied into marrying Sara so she can stay in the country, but actually really does have feelings for her, but won't admit them out loud (feelings which are requited, but Sara's not the vocal sort, either.) This is the part of the story that didn't really work for me, mostly because I could never quite get a handle on Tom as a character. He's so stolid and reserved, but it never made sense to me why. Sara doesn't speak up because she's shy and inexperienced at real life relationships, but we never find out exactly what Tom's baggage is that makes him act the way he does. (I suspect that baggage is full of Narrative Convenience, though.) As such, it was hard for me to root for them as a couple or see Tom as a romantic lead, which made that entire storyline fall flat. The ending also felt overly easy, almost to the point of being pat, where the only thing that kept it from being a typical rom-com movie ending was the jaunty music montage followed by swelling strings at the end.

This book was originally written in Swedish, and I thought the translation was excellent. I didn't realize until I was a substantial way in that it wasn't originally written in English, which is exactly what you want a translation to be. Once I realized that Bivald was Swedish, though, a number of things clicked into place. For example, while Broken Wheel is essentially an idealized version of a dying small town. You've got everyone having known everyone for forever, and people holding grudges for generations, and everyone knowing everyone's business while trying to hide their own troubles, etc. - that all felt real. But other than that, it seemed like Broken Wheel is the type of small town that exists only in movies and books like this one. Bivald's got a fascination with economics (something that I also noticed in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books, so maybe it's a Swedish thing?), specifically the sharing economy of a small town. And while I don't deny that that kind of mentality exists in a small town, I don't think it's as pervasive or as much of a cure-all as Bivald seems to think it is. I mean, giving away books and jars of preserves and getting a free beer on the house is fine and all, but someone still has to pay the electric bill, but those kinds of reality don't fit the story, and so aren't included.

On the whole, though, I did enjoy this book. I was willing to suspend my disbelief and just give in and be charmed by Broken Wheel and its inhabitants and the books they didn't know they needed, and while not every element of the story worked and I thought the ending was a little silly, overall I enjoyed the ride. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: This reminded me a LOT of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, especially in the "the right book to teach the right life lesson to the right person at the right time" angle. (Although, that said, are there books about people who love books where one of those people doesn't own a bookstore? Not everyone who loves books can own a bookstore! That is not a viable economic model!) If you like books about books, and/or romantic comedies about small towns, or if you just need a charming summer read with a happy (if not terribly realistic) ending, then this book is worth a shot. show less

We read fiction to fuel our fantasies, and this can include just about any kind of fiction and just about any kind of reader.

And for that matter, just about any kind of fantasies.

“The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend” will appeal not only to those who yearn for true love, but also to those of us who want to believe that a simple bookstore can change the world, or at least change a small town.

Sara is a young Swedish woman, an introverted bookworm, who had become a pen pal with Amy, an show more older bookish woman in Broken Wheel, a one-stoplight town in Iowa. Amy invited Sara to visit, but Sara arrives just in time for Amy’s funeral. She had planned to stay a month, but now what?

Broken Wheel has never had a tourist before, especially not an international tourist, and Sara immediately becomes special. She stays in Amy’s house, is driven around by George, a recovering alcoholic, and is not allowed to pay for anything. The townspeople seem to think she would make a good match for Tom, an introverted young man in the community, and everyone conspires to bring them together. And although Sara and Tom are drawn to each other, each is too shy to move their relationship along.

Sara wonders how she can possibly pay the town back for its kindness, then decides to open a bookstore in a vacant building that had been owned by Amy. There she tries to sell Amy’s vast library, even though Amy was apparently the only reader in Broken Wheel.

How can this possibly work, especially when Sara will be in town only for a few days? Ah, but this is fairy tale, of sorts, and anything can happen. And does. show less

Sara from Sweden strikes up a pen-pal friendship with a fellow book-lover from a tiny town in Iowa, but when she arrives for an extended visit she discovers her friend has died. So she moves into her house and opens a bookstore using her books, even though there are about six hundred people in town and none of them read, and somehow everyone in town inexplicably falls in love with her and her bookish ways, including, of course, a good-looking single guy.

I'm something of a sucker for books show more about books, and readers, and bookstores, so I wanted to like this one, but it was just too much, even for me. Nothing in this story, not a single point of plot or characterization, is remotely convincing, and some of it is just so bafflingly out of touch with reality of any kind that I find myself wondering if the author is, in fact, from outer space rather than from Sweden. I mean, presumably people actually own houses in Sweden, right? And other people inherit them when they die, rather than them just being free for random strangers to squat in and start selling off the dead person's belongings, right? And that's just the beginning. It gets stupider from there. And the book-themed stuff doesn't help much, either, because Sara's relationship with books feels incredibly shallow and stereotyped, and the sense of recognition I usually feel when reading about fellow book people really wasn't there at all.

But at least, I thought as I reached the halfway mark, for all its stupidity, I'm not finding it as deeply irritating as I probably should. It's pretty bad, but I'm not exactly hating it. It's far too blandly well-meaning to stir up much in the way of negative emotion. So that's something, at least.

Except then it just got even stupider. And stupider. And now I am very irritated with it, after all. Bah. show less

This is not Swedish literature as I have known it. It's not dark, or heavy, or full of deep introspection, or grisly, or creepy. This book is, in fact, the antitheses of what I would have thought of when I think of Swedish literature. It is charming and sweet, quirky and fun. It made me smile a lot, laugh a few times, and wish I could actually meet the people of Broken Wheel in real life.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is a love letter to books. It is about how books and reading can show more enrich a person's life, while at the same time, about Sara's personal journey to live a life beyond her books.

The story is a familiar one, of an outsider walking into an insular community and upsetting things and breathing new life into the community and its people. It's been done before, but Bivald made it her own. Sara is a consummate bookworm who travels to small-town USA to visit her pen pal--only to arrive and find that Amy had just died. I fell in love with Bivald's characters and cheered for them all. I loved watching them move out of their comfort zones and become happier with life because of Sara and the changes she causes in the town, both directly and indirectly.

Because, books broaden horizons. Readers of fiction have more empathy and are more open to new ideas and people -- this is something that has been shown in scientific studies. And the people in Broken Wheel found their horizons broadened and how. In return, they taught Sara that there was life outside of books, and that human connections were as important as fictional ones. I like to think that Sara was Amy's dying gift to Broken Wheel and vice versa.

I greatly enjoyed this book and hope that Bivald writes more, and that we see her future works translated for the US market.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley show less