This book confused me. I felt like I was reading something for a teenager & therefore felt like a grandma. I didn't form any attachments to the main characters & overall found it lacking in humour.

Bookshop Girl is a great fun read for anyone who has a love of bookshops and books.

However, I felt that the main plot of the book, saving Bennett's Bookshop, got a bit lost in other aspects of the plot. I didn't get a sense of what was driving the story forward, there didn't feel to be a sense of urgency to the plot and the climax of the story fell a little flat.

Still an enjoyable read but it will probably not stay in my memory for very long.

I think when I requested this book, I had some idea in my head as to what this book was about and to a certain point, the book delivered. However what I wasn't expecting was the disconnect with the way the main character thought, the language used in the book doesn't really feel as if it belongs to the current times? In a way.

Maybe if I had been in my teens, I might have loved it more?

I do love the basic premise of the book, anything even remotely involving a bookshop in a book grabs my attention and this book did just that. I loved the parts with Paige's art class and her genuine wish for Bennett's to remain open. I loved her passion for the books and her friendship with Holly was strong and good, too. I think, overall, the book achieved what it set out to do but there were many more bumps than I had been expecting.

The author's use of the words like 'Oh Em Gee' and such just didn't resonate with me and I am the kind of person who does use 'OMG' way too much. I am not quite sure why it didn't feel natural but it just didn't. Often it almost felt as if the author was trying too hard to present Paige as a teenager. The love interest in the book was interesting and the speech at the end was pretty good, too!!!

Overall, a light, mad, contemporary.book that could work for you if you are in the mood for something like that.

A hilarious story full of love, friendship and books! This is a laugh-out-loud kinda read and a perfect cheerful read for miserable whether or just when life gets you down. Excited to see what happens next for the bookshop girl!

I really enjoyed parts of this book, but others massively less so. I loved Paige’s determination and antics to save the bookshop, and I loved her life drawing crew. I didn’t love he characterisation as much otherwise though - especially the way her thought process was written. I have no issue her behaving, thinking and speaking like a teen, but it was written for teens too, in a way a lot of YA books aren’t.

I also like Paige’s love for books and some of her feminist rants, they were brilliant.

However, the setting felt a bit off - from technology it’s definitely set now, but it also talked about BHS which I felt dated it a little.

That aside, I did like Holly and the rest of the bookshop crew! And it’s funny and light and easy reading. Just a little young for me.

**
This review will go live on my blog on 11th June

I loved the idea of Bookshop Girl, when the book shop Paige Turner works in is threatened with closure she decides to fight and save it. Side plots of going to life drawing with her best friend to further her dream of art school, and meeting a boy, the interaction between Paige's family. I enjoyed that it didn't just focus on the main story and rounded out her life.
However, it felt like nothing ever really happened. The story concludes, but I felt like it lacked action.
It was an nice, easy read, but it just didn't captivate me.

As a former Saturday Girl in WH Smith, this book was always going to appeal to me - especially as I love the YA genre. This was a really easy fun read with likeable characters. Yes it was completely predictable, but that was part of its charm. I see that there’s a book 2 and I intend to read it. What I would add is this book has been billed as ‘for fans of Holly Bourne and Louise Rennison’... I would personally say it reads more like an ‘Angus Thongs’ book than a Holly Bourne book and for that reason may appeal to the younger end of the YA readers more. I would say if you liked ‘Geek Girl’ or ‘Girl Online’, you’ll like this too.

This book does have an immediate appeal - especially to those who hate to see an indepedent bookshop close - and significantly male misoginy is nailed as the story evovles. But future generations of young adults will be puzzled by the modern day references to e.g recent tv programmes. Give the book a whirl though, young or old.

Sixteen year old Paige Turner (you read that correctly!) has been working at Bennett’s Bookshop for 2 months before recieving the news that in a month it’ll become another casualty of the high street. She decides to put her best activist foot forward in attempt to save it, but it won’t be easy in a small town like Greysworth. Along the way there will be boys, feminism, naked bodies and friendship!

Let’s face it. We all knew before I even started this book that I’d absolutely adore it. Call it a sixth sense. Or just the fact that I love books, so what could possibly be better than reading a book about books?

Why were you so eager to read this book, I may or may not hear you asking? Well. Recently the council where I live (bizzarely close to where this story is set!) decided to muck about with a good chunk of the areas libraries to suit the budget. Initially they were going to close a bunch down, but they decided to just significantly reduce their hours – for the time being, at least. What changed their minds? People petitioned and (peacefully) protested! There was an uproar once people heard about the decision the council had made, and while reduced hours isn’t ideal – it’s certainly better than libraries being closed for good! However these reduced hours do mean that I now struggle to visit my local library, and the book club I was/am part of is rather rocky on its feet.

Bookshop Girl has tonnes of personality. The characters are so full of life and the book as a whole is a breath of fresh air, and so relevant in a day where too many bookshops and libraries are closing down for one reason or another. It’s short and sweet and easily can be read in one sitting. I’m so pleased that feminism was brought up on various occasions, I felt it’s a very appropriate topic to weave into this book and the author went about it in a fun way.

Something I loved (I say that like I didn’t love everything about this book) was the unbreakable friendship between Paige and Holly, it’s really lovely to read – even if they did have a bicker! Paige herself is such a bubbly and bright character, I love that she’s determined and fights for what she believes in. I chuckled more than a few times because of things she would say or do, and her reactions towards a certain serious fittie, *cough* Blaine, were gold. And yes, I did feel smug when my guess about him was right. I can’t talk about this book without mentioning Sue, she was such a supportive and confident character and I’m a sucker for an unlikely friendship.

Very much to be expected but this gets 5 stars without a single doubt in my mind, and I am so excited for book two! Thank you so much to the publisher Hot Key Books (Bonnier Zaffre) for letting me have an advanced copy via NetGalley, I absolutely loved reading this and it’s a book I would more than happily re-read.

“Books are an escape route. A refuge. They can be a connection to a stranger, someone you’ve never met, who writes something that you hadn’t considered anyone in the world to have felt but you.”

Short and sweet read.
Paige works in her local books shop, which is supposed to be closing. So she starts a campaign to try and save the store, assisted by a quirky range of characters from the bookshop and her life drawing class.

Aptly named Paige Turner works in a small town bookshop (and yes she knows how lame that sounds) that is threatened with closure. Sixteen year old Paige is not willing to give up without a fight however and she embarks on a campaign to save her workplace. We follow her through adventures in a life drawing class (where she struggles to draw male genitals!) , empathise when she gets a crush on a most unsuitable boy and cheer when she eloquently sums up what books mean to many of us. Oh yes I loved this book!! Lots of laugh aloud moments and the occasional sentimental tear kept me interested , a really fun read.

Books set in bookshops always get put straight to the top of my to-be-read list, so when I heard about "Bookshop Girl" I couldn't wait to read it.

When the regional manager of Bennett's bookshop comes for a meeting the staff are devastated to learn that their branch of the store will be closed. Sold to them as a fait accompli, they resign themselves to the idea- all except Paige Turner (don't worry, the obvious jokes are addressed and it isn't as cheesy as it seems!) and her best friend Holly who decide to become activists to prevent their only haven in their hometown from being closed.

I've never worked in a bookshop myself, but I have experienced the soul crushing sadness of seeing yet another beloved bookshop disappear from the high street until the only place left to buy books is an hour away or online.

I loved the friendship between Chloe and Holly and how silly they were together whilst also being supportive of each other. Their antics whilst attending their still life course were hilarious, and exactly how two sixteen year old girls would behave in such an awkward setting.

There was some romance in this book, but it really took a back seat to the main plot which I think was really positive. The girls had their crushes but the bookshop and their friendship was far more important. Paige and Holly's efforts to save the bookshop are so earnest and determined and their love for books is infectious. By the time I finished reading I was desperate to visit my nearest bookshop!

Bookshop Girl is a really fun, light, easy to read contemporary. The main characters are strong female leads and the whole message of the book is really positive. I'm looking forward to reading more in the series and continuing to get to know Paige and Holly.

Paige Turner (awesome name) has a part time job at Bennett's Bookstore but the higher ups are planning on closing it down.
Paige is not standing for this, especially when the fit Blaine has started to frequent the store. He is totally the one for her, all artsy and mysterious. Along with her best friend Holly, she is heading for a summer of anarchy. But can she save the bookstore?
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a fast read, easily paced out and full of interesting characters. Paige's voice was very young, maybe more 14 than old enough to have a job, and very perky. It took a little readjusting to go back to those teenage years but once you get into it, the pages flew by.
I will definitely read the next in the series.

This was good fun. It's got an extremely bright, chirpy teen girl voice, which might not suit everyone (I was never that kind of teenager and I cringe when people write, "Oh. Em. Gee" but I also know it's probably not UNrealistic), but it's also full of books and art and enough nerdiness to offset that. Plus, friendship and nascent feminist rage -- what more could you want?

Paige wants to save the bookshop where she works. It's partly sentiment (she has a lot of fond memories associated with it), and partly practical (she needs to save money for uni or risk being doomed to stay in her hometown forever, a relatable fear). It starts with a petition and snowballs into t-shirts, posters, and a demonstration... but will that be enough?

It was obvious from reading this that the author had worked in a bookshop and knew it inside and out. It felt realistic, and not overly idealised. Sure, there was the bookshop "family" with all its quirks, but there were also elderly customers taking a dump in the shop, so I'd say it showed both sides. But I'd be tempted to say it was a tiny bit dated in places -- while there were references to social media, they weren't nearly frequent enough to fit the outgoing teen vibe I got from the characters. (I'm sure Instagram could be utilised in a bookshop-saving campaign.)

I struggled to relate to Paige's obsession with the "fittie" Blaine, but then, I'm ace and was never all that into guys anyway, so it's understandable that I wouldn't get what she saw in him. Although embarrassingly, with hindsight, he's not dissimilar to a boy I had a crush on in year seven. But I was eleven. Paige should know better :P

Anyway, it's a quick and fun read, and one that would appeal to a lot of teen booklovers, especially those who were slightly more outgoing and lively than me at that age.

This review has been posted on Goodreads (I'll try and cross-post to Amazon once it comes out), but due to finals my book blog is currently on hiatus. Hopefully I'll be able to cross-post it there too.

So this book is about a young girl who works in a book shop, this shop is about to be closed down and she plans to stop it.
The plot for this book was really good and the characters were pretty cool. It would have been nice to have a bit more about some characters but it's not a long book so I was pretty happy with it.
I think Sue was my favourite character for obvious reasons, she's absolutely fabulous!
Honestly this book wasn't for me, the way it was written in the first person by the teenager was distracting. I have read other books narrated by character so a similar age and they were fine but for some reason I couldn't deal with it well. And it made it hard to connect with the characters.
The terms like 'Oh, Em, gee.' and 'defo' really put me off. I think if I was closer to the main character age it would have a big difference.
I will definitely try something else by the author but not with this main character.

A quick, fun read.
This was a nice short, fast-paced read that I managed to fly through. The plot was fun and the characters are definitely relatable for younger readers. I definitely think this is aimed at younger YA readers, I think I would have loved this at 14/15, but it felt very young to me as a not quite so young adult, particularly in the language used.

It was all about the books.
I really enjoyed the bookshop storyline and the fact that the importance of books was discussed a lot. Any book lover will easily relate to the passion these characters have when they talk about books and what their bookshop means to them. However, I felt like the saving the bookshop storyline was somewhat overshadowed at times by a lot of unnecessary drama.

So many pet peeves in one book.
This book contained so many of my bookish pet peeves that there wasn't really much chance of me loving it. We had a best friend fallout over the most insignificant thing and added nothing to the story, probably my most hated thing in books, and a girl becoming obsessed with a boy she knows absolutely nothing about. These things, among others, I just couldn't get past.

It tried too hard to be feminist.
Now don't get me wrong, I am all for using an opportunity within a book to discuss important issues, like male privilege and treatment of women in society. However, going out of your way in the book to make crossing the road into one of these moments is a bit of a stretch. There were some really great moments within the book, such as one within an art class, where an opportunity arose within the story to talk about these things. For me, though, there were too many times where we were taken completely out of the story to do so, which made it feel less genuine.

The boy drama was too much for me.
Despite our main character talking a lot about women being more than just their bodies and the way they look, she becomes obsessed over a boy she has never actually spoken to because she likes the way he looks! She then claims to be in love with him after they've exchanged about four words and still no nothing about each other. I was over this 'relationship' before the real drama even kicked off.

It did have a good message.
The main idea of this book is about standing up for what you believe in and fighting for the things you want, which I think is a really great message to be portraying to young readers. It did a great job of showing that even a 16-year-old girl can try to make a difference and that you're never too young to put up a fight.

Overall, this book was not for me. I can see the appeal for younger readers and do think it is a book I would have enjoyed as a young teenager. However, their were just too many things that annoyed me and little issues that I couldn't see past in order to enjoy it as much now.

Feminism and bookshops? Yes please!

It took me a while to get into this one: the first person perspective with Paige's bubbly, would probably talk ten to the dozen took some getting used to and wasn't a style I'd normally love. But Bennet's bookshop and Paige's passion for saving it drew me in. The ending was a little predictable (though maybe that's just me, as I worked out where the art books were disappearing off to really early on), yet satisfying and the quirky cast of characters kept things light-hearted despite the at-times serious subject matter. A perfect read if you want an easy-going book about how amazing books and bookshops are.

Summer is creeping up on us (I actually managed to leave the house without my winter coat today) so it’s the perfect time to start on that contemporary, fluffy YA. BOOKSHOP GIRL is a great example of this – funny and light fiction with an important message at its heart.

First thing to note: this book is a love letter to the high street bookshop. The shop where Paige works – Bennett’s – is on the verge of closing and Paige is determined to save her beloved bookshop. Every time I hear the words “hedge fund” in relation to Waterstones I get a little anxious…I know I’m not the only one who is dreading the possibility that the beloved UK chain will turn out like its American cousin Barnes & Noble – which has seen many employees dismissed over the last few months due to budget cuts. BOOKSHOP GIRL is a book about that fear, and I’m grateful for it – it’s a message to any reader that hey, you know that bookshop where you bought this book? It might not be around forever. SUPPORT IT.

(I know, the irony of me linking to Amazon UK from my reviews – but I’m aware many people either can’t always afford high street prices, or cannot access bookstores for a variety of reasons, whether it be cost, location or health reasons. I buy a heck of a load of books from Waterstones! *Throws money at them*)

The romantic thread in this novel is fairly predictable but I was glad to see it turn out the way it did – had it turned out differently I’d likely have been very irritated at Paige! Blaine is an artist and anarchist – thoughtful and romantic, or pretentious and annoying? You decide.

This is a fast read – very fluffy, funny and easy to finish in one sitting. I felt that Paige’s big speech towards the end about the importance of bookshops was a bit on-the-nose (the “bookshops are important” message was obvious enough from the narrative, a big monologue about it was a bit much, I thought) – in fact, she gets a bit preachy in several sections of her narration. They didn’t annoy me because of the topic, I just found the narrative to slow while Paige went off on a tangent about feminism or the like. I LOVE FEMINISM, I just kind of wanted to get on with the story.

BUT ANYWAY! Don’t let that put you off, it’s a very minor point. If you’re looking for a sweet and funny contemporary YA that is fairly light on the romance element, then BOOKSHOP GIRL should be exactly what you need.

This was a really cute and short read from a wonderful debut author. I managed to read the whole thing in one night [it’s around 180 pages] which came as a relief after the hard slog through The Fates Divide. I loved the premise of a novel about people trying to save a bookshop from closing down, and recognizing the importance of having such stores in society. Bookshop Girl delivered everything I asked for with a good side helping of female friendships and a generous dollop of humour. There were some really interesting points made about other issues, such as catcalling in streets too, which I thought fitted nicely into this little book.

“I might just be the bookshop girl with a bad fringe, who’s using books to jump into other peoples’ lives. Maybe nobody cares what I think, but if there’s a whole group of us, who all stand up against what we think is unfair, then we’ll be impossible to ignore.”

But of course, the majority of the book centres around this plan to keep Bennett’s open. I love how it wasn’t just about Paige and her friend keeping their jobs, but also about keeping an important store in the community. There’s mentions of the local library shortening open hours due to budget cuts too, which probably hammers the realism home to a lot of readers out there. My local library has now been combined with a job centre and a sort of nursery, meaning that there’s lots of people just passing through, sometimes with screaming kids in tow, rather than actually visiting the library, and I’m sure at some stage, someone will notice this and cut out the library entirely. Paige’s and her friends’ sense of humour isn’t always my cup of tea, and I cringed a bit at some of her vocabulary choices, such as when she said she wanted to “love-poach” a boy from her art class, or how her friend Holly declares she’s “in there like swimwear” but for the most part I could definitely relate to Paige’s talent for awkward situations. After all, with a name like Paige Turner, what else could you expect? Honestly though, I burst out laughing when she tries to crawl along the floor to avoid bumping into someone, or how a Lush bath bomb results in her eye going all red and itchy. It’s exactly the kind of awkward situation I would wind up in.

As for the romance, I saw the plot twist coming, and I was actually really glad for it. I won’t go into any spoilers here, since the book hasn’t even been released yet, but I have to say I reached the end of the novel with a certain sense of satisfaction when it came to Paige’s love life. And I was super pleased that, while romance was definitely very present in this book, it didn’t take over, or take away from the message of community and campaigning this book was about.

Overall, I’d give Bookshop Girl a 7.5/10. I loved the message and premise of the book, and I found the awkward situations Paige ends up in totally hilarious, but some of the lines were a bit cringe-worthy and probably intended for a younger YA audience [which as a 23 year old, I’m firmly in the oldie category]. Still, if you love bookshops and activism and a good dash of female friendship thrown in there, this is a book that will be worthy of your shelves.

Threatening with closure to make way for new retail units, Bennett's bookshop is at risk of being closed down.



With her Mum on jobseekers, choosing a future university for herself and sporting a hot guy in the street, her mind is full of things but at the top, saving Bennett's takes over. Working there with best friend Holly is amazing for them both and they set up an online petition to stop the closure going ahead.



After taking part in a life drawing class, the cute boy Paige likes turns up again at the bookshop, only as the closing down sale begins, the petition grows stronger as they use more social media outlets to spread the word through, so they then discover stock is going missing.



As friendship fall outs, dates, chance meetings and campaigning as well as reaching out to an author for help with the petition happen, Paige's life gets very busy as the final countdown to closer looks ever closer...



I liked the concept but found the storyline could've been better executed as there were often things that started but not played out, many characters could've had more input in the action but didn't seem as into the petition and campaigning to save their own jobs and the language was very feminist teenage angst and immature at times. Don't get me wrong, there's funny moments and darn weird happenings but it didn't completely work for me.



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!