The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Sara, a young woman from Sweden, arrives in a small town of Iowa, named Broken Wheel. The name of the town is as quirky as its people. She wants to meet Amy, an elderly lady, who has been her pen - pal for quite some time. When an unexpected event changes Sara's plans, she decides to stay in this strange town and share her deep love for books with the residents of Broken Wheel. She shows them that, perhaps, Literature has some solutions to their problems (no matter how big or small), while she struggles to step away from her comfort zone, to find her own answers and discover herself.

It is a heart-warming story, full of lively, interesting characters, an apotheosis of the way our love for reading can influence, even change, our lives.

I really loved [b:The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend 25573977 The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Katarina Bivald https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1452107441l/25573977.SX50.jpg 25758335]. If you love books and you're a romantic, this is the book for you. I'll admit that it took me a bit to get into it, but I never considered putting it down. It was always intriguing. It just wasn't a fast read for me. (This could be me more than the author.)It's supposed to be Sara's story about how she comes from Sweden to Broken Wheel, Iowa to visit a pen pal, another book lover, who sadly dies before Sara arrives. But the town steps in to play host and it becomes the story of how Sara affects every other living person in Broken Wheel as much as what happens to her. Anyone can tell you the plot, but I'll mention a few things I found fascinating.There's a section of the novel that describes when Penguin first began mass-producing paperbacks in 1935 and the publisher started the Armed Forces Book Club.“Best of all was the fact that the smaller paperback format fit easily into their uniform pockets. “It was especially prized in prison camps,” Penguin's official history claimed. Which Sara had always thought was a particularly sad sentence.But, still, it said something about the power of books. Not that they would somehow lessen the pain of war when someone beloved had died or create world peace or anything like that. But Sara couldn't help thinking that in war, as in life, boredom was one of the greatest problems, a slow, relentless wearing down. Nothing dramatic, just a gradual erosion of a person's energy and lust for life.So what could be better than a book? And a book that you could fit in your jacket pocket at that.” Of course, this is the book all librarians should read. And if you really love books, you'll love some of the ways Sara thinks about them.”. . .Tom thought she preferred [books] because they were happier than life, but even within their pages, people were dumped and broke up and lost those they cared about. And in life, just as in books, people eventually moved on to new loves. There was no difference between books and life there. Both involved happy and unhappy love stories.Of course, with books, you could have greater confidence that it would all end well. You worked through the disappointments and the complications, always conscious, deep down, that Elizabeth would get her Mr. Darcy in the end. With life, you couldn't have the same faith. But sooner or later, she reminded herself, surely someone you could imagine was your Mr. Darcy would turn up.” If you get the chance to read this book, don' t pass it up.

Este livro grita ficção em todas as páginas. Esta é uma boa história, não me interpretem mal. Lê-se bem, mas conseguiu irritar-me um bocadinho em alguns aspetos.
A nossa personagem principal é a típica pãozinho-sem-sal que não conhece nada do mundo e tem muito pouca experiência de vida porque a única coisa que faz é ler e pronto, daí não passa. Sai do seu país natal, a Suécia, para viajar para o estado do Iowa para conhecer pessoalmente uma amiga com quem troca correspondência. Ambas têm uma coisa em comum: amam ler. Só que quando a nossa protagonista, Sara, chega a Broken Wheel tem uma surpresa desagradável.
Sara, enquanto personagem, deu-me cabo dos nervos. Deixa que toda a gente ponha e disponha da vida dela, deixa que uma outra personagem em especifico a trate um pouco mal e nada faz.
No entanto, sim porque não tenho só coisas negativas a dizer sobre ela, é uma personagem que simultaneamente nos consegue deixar de coração quentinho, por se notar que tudo o que ela precisa é de amor, algo que vamos percebendo ao longo da história que ela nunca teve ao longo da sua vida. E ela aqui vai encontrar esse amor, a vários níveis. É um livro leve, que sabe bem ler (ainda que houvesse alturas em que me aborrecia, porque a autora metia-se a falar de coisas que não interessam assim tanto para nos dar um pouco de suspense em relação ao que vai acontecer a seguir.)
3/5 * é a minha classificação.

Reading Challenge category: a book about your hobby or passion

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“For as long as she could remember, she had thought that autumn air went well with books, that the two both somehow belonged with blankets, comfortable armchairs, and big cups of coffee or tea.”

I truly wanted to like this, after all what could be more delightful than a book about a book lover and her books? Nonetheless this was dull and dry. The characters are lacklusters, the plot was a very basic rom-com script and the town was nowhere near as charming as the author intended it to be.

That was so lovely and sweet and silly. Sara seemed to have such a nice sense of humor, and as a fellow bookworm I appreciated all her book enthusiams and thoughts!

So beautiful. I have fallen in love with this town and these people! A slow natural progression of feeling. Nothing is rushed. It has a great small town Midwestern feel. This is just a heart warming book.

Pen pals and books?! Right up my alley!

This book was sweet and fluffy. It was a nice break from some of the darker titles I have read recently. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but it was enjoyable!

This was sweet & light, but not something I'd recommend. Too many relationships that didn't make sense, and not enough about the one I was actually interested in. My favorite parts of the book were the times Sara talked about other books! Alright, but not great.

The audiobook reader, for some unfathomable reason, assumes a Southern accent when speaking for Iowan characters. This ended up being a little too light and sappy for me.

Had some trouble to get into the story, but once there it was a warm and lovable experience.

Sometimes I go into reading a book with such big hopes and yet the book can miss when it comes to plot, miss when it comes to characters, and miss when it comes to believability.

That is true of Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend.

The plot is farfetched: a Swedish woman comes to America to finally meet her pen pal only to learn her friend has died. Instead of returning home, the woman decides to open up a bookstore in her friend's dying Midwestern town.

The characters are farfetched; romance between an incredibly shy foreigner and an incredibly shy American man seems impossibly unlikely.

I usually give up on a book that isn't working for me. I kept turning pages with this book and read all the way to the end. I don't recommend it, but I must admit that something in me loves the idea of a story in which a dying town is revitalized by a bookstore.

Every book-lover likes to read novels about other book lovers, right? Especially books with lots of quirky characters who don't quite fit in with the crowd. The success of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and others like them probably helped inspire Sourcebook editor Shana Drehs to pick up this translation of a Swedish novel about the transformative power of books. Our heroine is Sara, a young Swedish woman who comes to visit Amy, her American pen pal in the small town of Broken Wheel, Iowa, only to learn that Amy has recently passed away. Sara is shy, insecure and bookish, but the townspeople of Broken Wheel take her under their collective wings to honor Amy's memory.

Sara is fairly passive for the first part of the novel, but when she decides to open a bookstore using Amy's books as the inventory, she blossoms and finds her place. With cute bookshelf titles such as “For Friday Nights and Lazy Sundays” and “Short but Sweet,” she finds the right book for everyone in town, including tough-as-nails bar owner Grace, sad-sack divorcee George, and self-righteous church maven Caroline. Only handsome Tom is immune to the power of books - but is he immune to Sara?

The slowly blossoming romance between Sara and Tom is actually the weakest part of the book, relying on the dreaded Big Misunderstanding trope that happens when two people fail to have a simple conversation instead of assuming the worst about each other. The book is more interesting when it focuses on the secondary characters, including the development of an unlikely relationship between two of them, and the rivalry between the economically failing Broken Wheel and its more prosperous neighbor, Hope. It's a nice fantasy that a bookstore and a few community events can save a dying Midwest town, but that's why it's called fiction, right?

I'm not sure we really need one more feel-good book about people who love books, but The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend does its job ably and with a great deal of charm.