From the publisher:
The author of Other People’s Houses and The Garden of Small Beginnings delivers a quirky and charming novel chronicling the life of confirmed introvert Nina Hill as she does her best to fly under everyone’s radar.
Meet Nina Hill: A young woman supremely confident in her own…shell.
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.
When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They’re all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She’ll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It’s a disaster! And as if that wasn’t enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn’t he realize what a terrible idea that is?
Nina considers her options.
1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)
It’s time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn’t convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It’s going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.
Another book that slipped through the Kindle cracks! I really need to get my Kindle more organized. I haven’t read Waxman in a while and I’m not sure why as I’ve always enjoyed her books. This one was a really fun read if you like quirky characters and a charming love story, and I love that combination.
Nina Hill is someone I could be friends with; she loves books, her cat, and trivia. One of my fondest memories of working for the Palm Beach County Library was winning the trivia contest. It was really close, but James Patterson got us the trophy (and I’m sure he has no idea and couldn’t care less!)
Anyway, Nina is on a trivia team that meets at local pubs and they are doing really well until a new team shows up and starts kicking their butts. The captain of their team, Tom knows sports, about which Nina and her team know very little. Tom is also cute and seems interested in Nina, but she is not an experienced woman of the world and probably she is wrong. She also works in a bookstore that is not doing that well. There’s an old saying, if you want to make a little money in a bookstore, start out with a lot of money. There is an idiosyncratic crew working there, and the owner does her best to dodge the landlord. Needless to say, Nina fits right in.
Then there’s the whole new family thing. Nina grew up in a single-parent household, with a mother who never really mentioned her father. Nina and her mom were very close, and Nina was devastated when she lost her mom. So she was really shocked to find out who her father was, especially as she only finds out when his lawyer contacts her to come to the reading of his will. Nina never really had any family, and now there is a rather large family all wanting to meet her. Seems her father has been married several times and had children with a few of the wives. A couple of them treat her like she is a conman out to steal their inheritances, but more of them are happy to meet her and want her to be a part of their crazy, modern family.
Abby doesn’t deal with chaos very well or change, for that matter. But she manages to muddle through and without giving too much away, let’s just say there is a most satisfactory ending all the way around. I’m moving Waxman up to my ‘must read’ list.
11/2020 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL by Abbi Waxman. Berkley; Illustrated edition (July 9, 2019). ISBN 978-0451491879. 352 pages.
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