Alas, I did not love modern romance Book Lovers by Emily Henry

 

The first chapter of modern romance Book Lovers by Emily Henry is amazing.  Heroine Nora is a Hallmark movie villain -- the workaholic girlfriend back in the big city who keeps telling the hero he actually needs to make a living, which he will not be able to do by taking over a failing Christmas tree farm.  You know, the girlfriend who gets dumped for the sickly sweet, cupcake-baking granddaughter of the owner of the failing Christmas tree farm (who is himself Santa Clause).

We get a great back story on Nora and why she believes it is so important to be financially stable.  It's for the radical reason that she has actual responsibilities, including taking care of her younger sister since the death of their mother when they were young.

By around Chapter 2 Nora is taking a trip with her sister to a small town in North Carolina called Sunshine Falls.  The town is a disappointment to her, with boarded up buildings and terrible food.

Alas, at that point rather than leaning in -- what would it really be like to live in an economically depressed backwater where people have no visible industry aside from a few scattered farms?  -- Sunshine Falls is actually kind of okay.  It has small crowds in its coffee shop and restaurants (one of which is, of course, awesome), although it's not clear where they come from.  Not everyone is interesting but everyone is super nice, and they love strangers.  The town could support an independent bookstore if only the bookstore were a little better managed.

Once Book Lovers takes this turn, I more or less lost interest in it.  If I hadn't gone in believing that it would be a takedown of Hallmark movies I'm sure I would have liked the plot just fine.  The romance is nice.  The real romance -- the relationship between Nora and her sister -- is interesting and moving.  But I just so wanted this book to be what it started out as.  

Also, I was skeptical of Nora's love of New York City.  The Manhattan she described, full of vibrant energy and diversity and everyone just being loudly themselves, more or less stopped existing by the 1990's when the prices shot up and the island became Disneyfied.  But I appreciated how much Nora loved the city, whether or not it actually exists.