A review by booksnaturemagic
The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler

1.0

I wanted to like this book! I love bookstores and books, used to live in NYC and enjoy stories about the city, and I was intrigued by the plot about a single mom deciding to have a baby on her own. But ick. The main character, Esme, is so weak and, honestly, unbelievable. It is totally not plausible to me that a grown woman who traveled across the world to get her PhD at Columbia and is living on her own in NYC, studying art history and well versed in feminist theory and literature - that she would stay with a man who was so blatantly awful - belittling, controlling, perhaps even abusive. There was nothing at all plausible about their relationship - it was so obviously WRONG and she kept making dumb decisions that I couldn't stomach someone who was in her shoes would continue to make! And it was also blatantly obvious that the reader is supposed to yearn for her to end up with some other guy who works in the bookstore - predictable. The other thing that bugged me was how the author's snotty, hipster or perhaps intellectual bias kept slipping out. Disappointing - couldn't even finish it. Too frustrating.