The Bookshop of Forgotten Dreams by Emily Blaine

97th book of 2021

Reading period: December 03rd 2021 – Deccember 06th 2021

Summary

Sarah and Max should never have met. She’s a shy bookworm who’s barely ever left her little village; he’s a bad boy actor with the world at his feet. But when Max crosses one line too many, he’s faced with community service in Sarah’s bookshop. With an unruly theatre group to run and a gorgeous, tattooed stranger under her roof, Sarah’s about to discover that real life is more complicated than anything she’s ever read in her beloved books.

Trigger Warning

Sexual content, violence, suicide

Rating

Review

I was starting to fall into a reading slump, so I went to a bookshop and found this book. Nothing better than a romance to break it!

The premise was intriguing. The book is set in France, and we are following the romance between two opposite people. Sarah, a young woman who owns a bookshop and lives her peaceful life with books. Then, Max is a famous actor who mostly plays bad boys in films. Behaviour that shows in real life, he loves a good fight. However, one day he is sent to Sarah’s bookshop to do community service after an umpteenth battle that can have more consequences for his career.

The cast of characters was a good one. I was so invested in their story and wanted to know more about them; it wasn’t only the two main characters but all of them. I connect a lot with Sarah; she is a book lover and a book hoarder. She also is a person who just wants to help and always find new ideas to help her shop. Max is the stereotype of romance stories. He is tall, dark and mysterious, but we love them! Here, I like to discover his story. He is complex, and I think he needs a therapist, but I like all the different aspects of his personality. And the revelation!! OMG!!

While reading the book, the problems I had were the story’s timeline and the smutty parts.
I was a little lost about when things were happening. It was like we had two different timelines—first, the village’s timeline and then the romance timeline. So, it didn’t feel like a whole story, but two stories put in one. The problem with this feeling of two timelines is that you have so many time-jump that the romance doesn’t feel real but more too insta-love. Like they don’t talk a lot, and next page, they are kissing like they are soulmates.
For the smut, the issue I had was the difference between what we know about Sarah and her behaviour. Indeed, you have a woman who struggles to even talk to a guy, and it’s kinda low key that she doesn’t have or not have a lot of sexual encounters, and then when she starts to kiss Max and more, it’s like she knows everything and has a lot of experience. So those parts were, for me, the less believable.

I don’t want to talk about the ending, as I am still processing it.

Overall, even if this book has some problems, I had a great time reading this romance. It was fast and sweet to read, the best to stop a reading slump before it starts to settle.

Liz.