A few minutes ago I finished reading The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald and my mind is still spinning from the gentle joyfulness of this book.  Thank You Sourcebooks Landmark for allowing me to read a pre-release copy through NetGalley. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommends has won the two awards listed below and Amazon has awarded it An Amazon Best Book of January 2016 and I concur with all of those decisions.

 January 2016 Indie Next selection and
January 2016 LibraryReads selection

The following synopsis is directly from the authors website katarinabivald.com.

Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal. When she arrives, however, she finds Amy’s funeral guests just leaving. The residents of Broken Wheel are happy to look after their bewildered visitor — not much else to do in a small town that’s almost beyond repair. They just never imagined that she’d start a bookstore. Or that books could bring them together – and change everything.

There’s a book for every person…and a person for every book.

 Sara’s trip to Broken Wheel came about because she had lost her job and through Amy’s invite thought that she would have a grand adventure that would be the highlight of her rather dismal life.  Her arrival and brief occupancy of their town unexpectedly became the highlight of the towns people’s lives.   As I read this book I had this picture in my head, kind of like a movie reel.  The picture and cast started out a vintage aged yellow and slowly developed color until at the end I was reading a book with so much color that the pages seemed to vibrate with life.

There were a couple of themes that resonated with me.  The first thing that resonated with me in the book was how loneliness is a facade and how easy it is to hide behind that wall. It is far easier to hide than it is to take a chance and get out of your comfort zone. Sara became the catalyst for every person in this book to gain confidence, reach out to each other, or accept another’s help. The second was how reading a book gave each of these characters life.  When I read a very good book, for me, the feeling I get is like a visit from a past best friend.  After our reunion, telling stories only the two of us would know, i have this buzz.  That buzz is life.  This book gave me that buzz. I wanted to shout from the rooftops how much I loved this book!

If I owned a bookstore, and this book was in a bookshelf, I would get out a black felt tip pen, write on a post card and tape it to the front of this shelf: Happy Endings When you Need Them. This book provides that and so much more.

   ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Copyright Deborah Kehoe 2016 All Rights Reserved.