Saturday, November 1, 2014

"The Bookseller" by Cynthia Swanson would be a good book club selection

bookcover of THE BOOKSELLER by Cynthia Swanson
This book is not due to be released until March 2015 but I don't want to wait until then to review it -- especially because I think it would be such a good book club discussion book and many book clubs choose a full year of books at the beginning of the year. 

The book is set in Denver in late 1962/early 1963.  The story is told in first person narration by the main character, a single 38-year old woman named Kitty Miller who owns a book story with her best friend Frieda.  Kitty starts having incredibly realistic dreams about an alternate life in which she has married and decided to use her full first name. In that life, people know her as Katharyn Andersson. 

I can't say too much about the story without giving out spoilers. But I appreciated how the author takes the reader deeper into both lives -- at the beginning both her single life as Kitty the bookseller and her married life as Katharyn seemed too good to be true (especially Katharyn's life) but over the course of the book the reader learns that there are difficult aspects to both lives and choices in both lives that Kitty/Katharyn must make.  While I was reading I kept changing my mind as to which life was more appealing to me.  And when Kitty started incorporating aspects of Katharyn's life into her own, I was really wondering what was going on and where the story was going!

I enjoyed this book a lot and will be recommending it to my neighbors even if we don't start up our book club again.  I will say that it is primarily a chick book -- I am not sure whether men will relate to it as much as women will.

This is the author's first novel.

I received an ARC of this book from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a review.

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