"The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend" by Katarina Bivald

Title: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Author: Katarina Bivald

Publication Year: 2013 (republished Jan. 1st 2016 in trade paperback)

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Pages: 400

My Rating: 4/5 stars

"The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommends" deals with Sara, a Swedish girl who works in a bookstore and who loves and breathes books. During the past months, Sara has had a penpal in Amy from Broken Wheel, Iowa - an elder lady who loves books as much as Sara does. 

One day, Sara decides to go all the way to Iowa to visit Amy and finally be able to discuss novels with someone who shares her love for books. However, Sara quickly realizes that something is wrong when she arrives in Broken Wheel, and that's where the story takes off...

This is a story for any book lover! From the very first pages, I couldn't help but smile when reading about the adorable Sara who doesn't really know how to act in the real world; however, she's an expert when it comes to escapism in books. More than once, this cute story moved my book-loving heart, and I believe that if you love reading, you can't help but adore this story as well. Yes, it is very perfect and partly cheesy, but in this case I didn't mind because the novel was perfect that way. 

"The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend" contains a diverse cast of characters which I quickly grew attached to. Once again, they are very caricatured - you have the crazy woman, the insecure Catholic and even a bisexual - but in this case it simply worked, and I didn't feel like rolling my eyes at any point. 

I didn't expect to love this book as much as I did, but I simply couldn't help it. My only complaint is that is contains multiple references to other books (a good thing!) which are quite spoilery (a bad thing). But all in all, this cheesy, somewhat predictable story really worked, and I'll definitely be missing Sara, the other characters, Broken Wheel and Sara's inspiring love for books.