The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Received via NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark in exchange for an completely unbiased review.
Also posted on Silk & Serif


Sara has recently lost her job and now she is starting to question her own life choices. She's always found books to be a great distraction from a world she considers not worth being part of, but more and more she's beginning to wonder what hiding behind books has really given her. What if all that time spent hiding from heart ache and pain has kept her from experiencing life? It's with this mindset Sara decides to take a risk and do something completely out of her element: she's going to America! Sara travels all the way to Broken Wheel, USA to meet her pen pal and fellow book lover Amy for the first time. show more Unfortunately, the trip doesn't work out at all how she planned but slowly the quirky town works it's way under her skin and leads her on a path to self discovery.
Readers of The Broken Wheel Recommend is a story about pen pals, friendship, self discovery and loss. Sara is the every-woman of book nerds everywhere who hide behind a book cover whenever life gets difficult.

I found this book intelligently written with eloquent words and fantastic imagery. I loved the author's tone. The characters were incredibly complex with long histories that affected the lives of each character uniquely. I found myself feeling empathy for poor George who fell into alcoholism following the breakup of his family, causing him to lose his only daughter. I felt tortured for poor Caroline who, although extremely loud and over religious, was a woman who regretted never meeting "The One". I even grieved the passing of Amy through reading the letters Sara and Amy shared over their brief friendship. It is so very rare to meet someone who truly understands you and Amy's sudden departure before Sara could meet her caused tremendous pain.

I found the epistolary method employed by Bivald while transitioning between chapters genius because it slowly develops Amy and Sara's relationship throughout the book while often highlighting town relationships explored in the next chapter. Mostly I loved this method because by the end the reader has developed an emotional connection to Amy and Sara's friendship so that the last letter pretty much gives you the big "Feels".

Sara sighed. It was like trying to change an unhappy ending in a book. However much you tried to convince yourself that things could end differently if only you could get rid of the sadistic bungler of an author, it was all still there in the back of your mind.

This is a story about a woman who learns to live outside her books and live life. Its about a woman who learns to distinguish literature from reality and the profound difference that makes in enjoying one's life. Who knew opening a book store in a small town in a foreign country could have such a profound effect on so many individuals? Sara and her bookshop, The Oak Tree Bookstore, changes not only the lives of each person in Broken Wheel in positive ways, but also begins the resurrection of a once dead town fighting for its last breath. It was heartbreaking and inspiring experience to read The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend.
Honestly, this review doesn't even come close to how I feel about this book. I don't think I possess the writing skill to really convey how much I loved this book.

Dewey used to take naps in the box of library cards, in the box of return forms and the box of tissues, and on visitors’ laps or in their briefcases. When people started turning up to use the library’s computer to look for jobs that didn’t exist, he sat on their knees.

I want to think that it helped.

This book would appeal to readers who enjoy stories about friendship, self discovery, recovery and small town America. I would only suggest reading this if you want to feel deep, powerful emotions and have a deep respect for books. A definite chick lit novel with a variety of characters and a surprisingly accurate depiction of small town America (or so I think, I'm not actually from a small American town). 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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

A Must Read book for anyone who loves books or life and especially for those who love both

This is a wonderful romantic comedy about books, small town America, books, friendship, books, love, books and how to live a life worth reading about.

At the centre of the book is Sara, a gentle, perceptive young woman from Sweden who has fallen in love with books but has never really succeeded in engaging with people, except for Amy, her pen-friend in the USA with whom she corresponds about books and life and the meaning of both. Through Amy's letters Sara learns about the small town of Broken Wheel and the people who live in it and a new urge strikes her: to go out into the world and experience things for herself.

Sarah arrives in the USA for her show more long-planned visit with Amy, only to find that her friend has died. The people of Broken Wheel insist that Amy would have wanted her to stay and move her in to Amy's house.

What follows is a delightful story of the world as I would like it to be, where good people help each other to be better people and books expand people's imaginations and unlock their hearts.

The is a perfectly balanced romantic comedy with lots of funny moments and quite a few moments of "Oh, I hope this doesn't all go badly wrong" angst. The people in the book are described with compassion and without judgement.

Books are also important characters in this novel. I found myself saying hi to many old friends and being reminded of how much fun it is to meet someone who likes the same books as I do but has a few new ones to recommend. At one point in the story, Sara is sitting surrounded by Amy's books. She's supposed to be sorting them but ends up dipping into each of them. Sara quotes from the half a dozen books without naming them and I realized I'd read all but one. Like Sara, I've often found myself surrounded by books and being so dazzled by them that I can't move on.

This book made my laugh and cry. It made me think about the balance between reading and doing and about how both of them count as living. Most of all, it left me wanting to move to Broken Wheel and take all my books with me. show less

Let’s face it. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is not an example of fine literature. The characters are one-dimensional; in fact, they are practically caricatures of every small-town inhabitant ever written. The plot is highly predictable; there really is not much that will surprise any reader. The pacing is incredibly rushed; it is as if Ms. Bivald was in a tremendous hurry to finish her story. There is a bit of a lecture to the whole story, as Sara and the town members provide the examples for not living life to its fullest. Even worse, the story seems to not-so-gently mock life in the small-town Midwest with their unique rituals and rivalries. All of this should be enough for me to say that this is a book to avoid at all show more costs. However, that is just not true. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. You need to get your hands on a copy and read this delightful book as soon as possible.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend shamelessly panders to those who absolutely adore books, and that is where a large portion of the story’s charm lies. Readers will relate to Sara being caught sniffing a book. They will flash back to their own memories of beloved characters and novels about which Sara waxes poetic. They will instantly recognize Sara’s need to seek solace within a book’s pages and her desire for a vacation to do nothing but read. Moreover, book bloggers everywhere will also appreciate the idea of Sara traveling to a different country to finally meet what others would consider a perfect stranger. Ms. Bivald captures the book blogger community so well with Sara and Amy’s long-distant relationship. What she depicts is so very representative of the entire community, the ease with which we make friends around the globe over a common love of reading and our desire to meet each other in person whenever possible. While some readers may find this somewhat far-fetched, those of us who have traveled cross-country to meet each other know otherwise.

The fact that Ms. Bivald is so deft at reminding readers of the power and pleasures of reading makes this a novel that book lovers must read in spite of all of its faults. The bookstore Sara creates is idyllic in its perfection. Better still are the books she chooses for the town members and their reactions to those books. Sara refers to each book so reverently and so lovingly that it makes you want to make a list of every book referenced and read them all again. Similarly, Sara’s passion for finding the right book for an individual makes you want to find that perfect book for someone in your own life. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend makes you proud to be a member of the book lover community, and there is no better way to start out the new year than reading a novel that is all about celebrating books. show less

This is a older chick lit-pleaser novel along the lines of Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, featuring an outsider who shakes up and wakes up a town that didn't know it needed either. Sara from Sweden is befriended by Amy of Broken Wheel, Iowa, when she buys a book from her online. They plan a meeting in the US, but by the time Sara arrives, Amy has died and the town is frozen with bereavement, as is Sara. But when she finds Amy's immense stash of books, and she sees all the empty storefronts of Main Street, a scheme hatches, and the results can be seen a mile off. The story line also has a few predictable romances and redemptions of minor characters, but the result is just so, so sweet that it leaves aching teeth in its show more wake. There are much, much better novels of the dying Midwest - try Jane Smiley and Michelle Hoover instead. show less

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 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 show more 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