It doesn't get much better than this. Bookish books, lovely characters, the perfect plot, a book shop on a beautiful, lone island, and of course an aging and evolving character that is both crusty and cantankerous but which readers fall in love with anyway. Mr. A. J. Firky, that is. I wasn't expecting to fall in love with this novel, I truly wasn't. I usually find books about book stores a bit cliche to be candid, but this one here is one for the books. Pun intended. It has the perfect amount of everything you could want out of a novel. Like having just the right amount of baking ingredients for that perfect Lemon Pie. Some few hundred pages to the end made for quite an eloquent read, not too long not too short, again just right. Most of all, the quirky references to all time favorite titles, seemingly made in jest at the start, were impeccable. I certainly cannot stress how much I recommend this book. It has now become one of my all time faves. If you believe in book hangovers, well this one definitely left me in a deep state of one. Happy reading.

A little slow for me at first, but as soon as I had mustered through the first few chapters I knew I was in deep into another novel I would not be able to stop reading until the end. Though dark, Eleanor Oliphant's character surprised me as being insanely and naturally funny. Though notably oblivious to her comical charm, which made it all the better, she has much like her readers some challenging issues to overcome. I am a tough critic but even I fell victim to Gail Honeyman's wonderful novel about the very interesting journey of one special protagonist as her character evolves. A must read in 2018!