The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katrina Bivald
I have enjoyed many books about reading, bookshops and book lovers. So when The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend was compared to The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry — I had high hopes.
In this novel Sara, a Swedish woman, comes to Broken Wheel, Iowa to visit her pen pal and fellow book lover, Amy. But when she arrives in this rundown small town she finds that her elderly friend recently died and left instructions for Sara to stay in her house as long as she wants. Sara, a devoted bookworm tries to hide herself in the books from Amy’s library but soon gets drawn into the town and the lives of its local inhabitants — a motley crew of misfits. These normally insular Iowans gradually warm up to Sara and make her a part of their town. She opens a bookshop and recommends the perfect reads for her new friends and neighbors. Much of the story is about the effect Sara and her reading recommendations have on the inhabitants of Broken Wheel.
The book is interspersed with the past correspondence between Amy and Sara and I really wanted these letters to tell more about their relationship and shared love of reading. But, sadly the letters are stilted and reveal little about either Amy or Sara.
The small saving grace in The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is Sara’s love for books — I had to smile, as Sara explains the difference between the smell of a paperback and that of a hardback — a true book lover.
I also nodded in recognition at this description of Sara’s school experience:
“Others might have found themselves stuck in a tired, old high school in Haninge, but she had been a geisha in Japan, walked along with China’s last empress through the claustrophobic, closed off rooms of the Forbidden City, grown up with Anne and the others in Green Gables, gone through her fair share of murder, and loved and lost over and over again.”
This is a sweet but predictable (and often trite) story of friendship, small-town America, and the love of reading and books. It tries to be life affirming, but instead, wanders into the clichéd.
Reading The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend was an enjoyable, if bland, experience.
I just wished it could have been better.
A digital advanced readers copy was provided by Sourcebooks Landmark via Netgalley.
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