This is a fun read. Thirty-ish Nina Hill prefers staying home with a book over going out and dealing with people (same). She gets plenty of that from her job as a bookstore clerk. She’s got her cat, Phil. She’s got tons of books in her cozy apartment. She has a few friends and ventures out occasionally to compete in a pub trivia league. That’s social, right? What more does anyone need?

She soon discovers that the father she never knew died and mentioned her in her will. The will’s not the bad part; it’s the fact that she suddenly has a large extended family. And most of them want to meet her. Oh, the horror! But as she slowly gets to know them, she discovers that there are many different kinds of relationships, and some of them aren’t so bad.

What works?

The characters in The Bookish Life of Nina Hill are believable and engaging. The quirky third-person narrator kept me turning pages; it felt like I was sitting with a dear friend in a coffee shop, hearing some benign but juicy gossip. Author Abbi Waxman takes some risks with the narrator. From the third page (of the digital version), as she describes the story setting amongst “semiwinding streets that look like they were lifted wholesale from a Capra movie,” you know you’re in for an unusual ride:

“Even today, most of the houses look the way they always have, thanks to historical preservation and a general consensus that the whole thing is hella cute.”*

I love this last sentence, complete with tonal contrasts. Not only does she summarize the story’s setting (it’s Los Angeles, and we feel it) in a tidy visual picture, she summarizes the prevailing mindset of all the characters we’re going to meet in just a few words. In the computer programming world, they call this efficiency elegant.

What doesn’t work

Genre gripes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any single, intelligent female protagonist must be a modern reinterpretation of Elizabeth Bennett. To be fair, this isn’t a complaint with Waxman’s novel as much as it’s a gripe about modern book marketing. Look, I love Jane Austen as much as the next reader. But really, people, there are more women in the fiction world than one.

I suppose Jane Austen did invent the modern rom-com genre, and like any genre, there are beats that must be hit or tropes that must be followed. If I don’t like it, I can read something else…if I can find it (see also: book marketing complaints). I liked this book much better than I liked other modern retellings of P&P, such as Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible. Waxman plays around with some of the genre conventions. She puts her own spin on the family drama, that’s for sure.

Narrator’s voice

The other thing that occasionally doesn’t work is….the narrator’s quirky voice. This voice takes risks, and sometimes those choices took me out of the story. If for most of the novel I felt like I was sitting in a coffee shop with a friend…well, who doesn’t get annoyed with a dear friend from time to time? Fortunately, Waxman plays her hand intelligently and doesn’t wear the reader out trying to be aggressively cute or clever. When I fell out of the story, I forgave the narrator and jumped back in because Nina was a character I wanted to spend time with. At least Waxman is trying to do something interesting here, and third-person narrators often fall short of that mark.

Storytelling lessons

Predictable endings are okay. Lots of stories’ endings are predictable (see: every Disney movie ever made, every romance novel published, most action and superhero movies, etc.). We watch to see how the couple will get to their happily-ever-after or how the bad guy will get his comeuppance. What matters in a predictable story is whether we enjoy the journey. I enjoyed this journey.

Take risks. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but being interesting is a lot more important than being dull but safe.

Yay or nay?

Yay. Highly recommended for a rainy weekend or a day at the beach. I look forward to reading more of Abbi Waxman’s work.

*Waxman, Abbi. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (p. 3). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.