Hello! I’m here to review a book about books I was excited to read early. **And every day we are reminded that discrimination against marginalized communities is still a serious problem, so click here to find a compilation of resources where you can donate your time, money, or whatever you can to support these communities. I still encourage you to research these causes on your own to educate yourself and find the best way to lend your support.**
I think I speak for most book nerds when I say that novels about libraries or books in general will always make their way onto our TBRs. So when I saw The Littlest Library, a literary fiction novel by Poppy Alexander, up on NetGalley, with an array of books hidden inside an English red telephone box, I was intrigued enough to request it. I was expecting small town vibes, and the power of books bringing a community together, and I’ll say I was pretty spot on with my predictions.
Jess Metcalf is perfectly content with her quiet, predictable life. But we know the only thing about life is its unpredictability. When her beloved grandmother, who raised Jess for close to 30 years after her parents’ deaths, passes away and she loses her job when the local library closes its doors, Jess’ life is turned upside down and she starts to feel stuck. With a little nudge from her best friend, she decides it’s time for a new beginning and buys a tiny cottage in the English countryside. To her surprise, Jess finds herself the new owner of a run-town telephone box at the edge of her property. Using the ten boxes of books her grandmother left behind, Jess decides to share the love and turn the phone box into the littlest library in England. It’s not long before the books are exhanged from villager to villager, filling the town with conversations of plot and characters – the library might even work its magic to bring Jess’ grumpy neighbor out of his shell. With every passing day, Jess is beginning to feel more at home in this tiny cottage in the tiny English community, but will she be able to fully make the leap and follow her heart wherever it leads?
Overall I found this to be an enjoyable read. The book starts off with Jess losing her way and unsure of what to do next, and when she’s re-directed to a small town in the English country-side she comes across a tiny cottage for sale and, feeling adventurous, puts in an offer that same day. The cottage just happens to below to the grumpy neighbor who helped her car when it wouldn’t start, and at a town-hall meeting Jess decides to pitch an idea to put a little library inside the abandoned phone box on the property, and fill it with her grandmother, Mimi’s books. It’s not long before all scores of people are popping by just to see what the library has to offer – mothers stopping by with their kids before school, sisters no longer on good terms but reading the same book, a husband who needs to learn when to put his family first, everyone is welcome to share the love of these books. It seems like Jess’ arrival in town sparks other members of the community to pitch in and help out their struggling neighbors, like volunteer at the corner store to allow the owner to attend training to reopen the post office. Although Jess seems to be settling in nicely, she is still grieving for her grandmother, the only parental figure she’s known since her parents died in a car accident when she was four. Through conversations with her neighbors, she learns that grief is more of a universal emotion than she thinks – almost everyone she talks to has felt the loss of something or someone, a loved one, a marriage, a mindset, a job, a way of life – and that no matter how put-together anyone seems on the outside no one truly has all the answers. Mimi has also left some annotations in some of her books, which provide a smile and some much-needed hope to those who use the library. What this story does best is showing the power of words, both spoken and written, how a community can come together to bring out the best in each other, and that there will always be a book waiting for you when you need it most.
I do also want to point out some things in the novel that I didn’t quite enjoy. This book is full of pages and pages of descriptions, which works well when both Jess and the reader are getting acquainted with the town and her cottage, and everything that she’ll need to do to fix it up. But sometimes, in instances where I felt excessive description was not inherently necessary, I found myself skimming until we came across more of Jess’ internal dialogue or conversations with another character. I have to say I liked Aidan and Maisie (his daughter) as Jess’ next-door neighbors, and the sort of grumpy-sunshine dynamic Aidan and Jess portrayed throughout most of the book, but I wasn’t a huge fan of Aidan’s ex-wife, Lucie, becoming a main antagonist and pretty much the sole reason he and Jess couldn’t be together or even spend time bonding for a majority of the book. We get one odd interaction with Lucie, and then we’re she’s taking Aidan to court to fight for more custody of Maisie, presumably because she is jealous of Jess. And I didn’t understand Aidan’s comment that Maisie won’t become an alcoholic like her mother, when almost every interaction Jess has with another woman from town is them drinking several glasses of some kind of alcohol. Lastly, I really don’t know why Jess, as a librarian herself, constantly and consistently says that she thinks libraries and their systems are going to be obsolete soon, due to funding cuts and the digital age. In recent years we’ve seen library advancements to keep up with the growing technological boom, embracing digital archiving and being able to share books to a wider community through apps and online. So I was a little taken aback when Jess shares her thoughts, in the first chapter nonetheless.
In the end, I’d say the tagline sums up this novel to a tee – a heartwarming literary novel about a woman who turns an ordinary red phone box into the littlest library in England and brings together a struggling town. It’s a story about loss, life, books, community, and coming together to bring out the best in each other. I’m glad I gave it a chance. The Littlest Library will be released (in the U.S.) on July 19th, 2022, which is the day this post goes live, so please join me in wishing it a happy book birthday and consider picking up a copy for yourself if you’re interested. *Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Avon Books, for the e-copy, all thoughts and opinions are my own.*
Where to find The Littlest Library
Bookshop
Amazon
Goodreads
Storygraph
HarperCollins
Poppy Alexander’s site
Thoughts About Things 