Book Review: The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Source: I bought this book

Synopsis:

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Internationally bestselling and filled with warmth and adventure, The Little Paris Bookshop is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives.

Review:

There are spoilers ahead. I do not care and I make no apologies.

I won't say I hated this book... but what I feel is pretty close to that.

I had such high hopes from reading the above synopsis! In my mind, this book was going to be a very different journey; a more magical, fantastical journey. To me, this synopsis read like a science-fiction sort of theme... with this bookseller who has this uncanny ability to be able to prescribe books to his clients to feed their souls and heal their broken hearts. That he would travel the world in his floating "apothecary," prescribing books to his clients, and eventually discovering the book (or the love?) that would heal his own heart and feed his own soul.

I suppose, in essence, that is what the book is... It's just that in my mind, it was a much more exciting and adventurous story...

What I actually got was a gratingly romantic fiction story (romantic in the sense of which followed approximately the same formula as above. I found it pitiful that this man was still mourning the loss of a lover twenty years after she left. I found it petty and immature that he had never read the letter she wrote him, completely closed off the room that reminded him most of her. I found the journey he took pointless and unexciting. We only saw him prescribe a handful of books, and in the end, he gave away the bookshop! I'm sorry, but if the thing is in the title, it needs to hold a more significant role than merely being the vessel he uses to travel the world!

In short, I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Goodreads rating: