This Book Made Me Think of You

Don’t you love that feeling when you close a book and think … wow, the author handled that topic so perfectly! I’ve read quite a number of books about characters navigating life after a significant loss, but I’m not sure any of them has felt as complete as this one by new-to-me author Libby Page. The bonus is that the story is also a love letter to books and reading with MANY bookish references!

Londoner Matilda “Tilly” Nightingale (take a moment to appreciate how awesome that name is) has lost her husband Joe, the love of her life, to cancer. In many ways the two were opposites: Joe, an American-born athletic extrovert to Tilly’s quirky bookish introvert, but their chance encounter in a bookstore one day began a love story that she’s deeply grieving the loss of.

Tilly hasn’t felt like reading since Joe’s death five months ago, but on her birthday she receives an unexpected call from a man named Alfie Lane, the proprietor of local bookshop Book Lane. He informs her that she has a parcel waiting for her from Joe. What? How could this be?

In a final act of love for his wife, Joe arranged a year of books … one each month … specially cultivated for her to remind her to keep living and maybe even try new things. Accompanying each book is a handwritten letter from Joe to Tilly explaining the book choice. Over time, her visits to the bookstore lead to a sweet, supportive friendship with Alfie, and the books he gives her from Joe lead her on adventures and to new friends she might never have otherwise had. The places she goes and the people she meets in this book were amazing!

Can I stop for a minute and say … this may be the coolest, most thoughtful idea ever, and I kinda want a box of tissues right now just thinking about it. *sniff*

I won’t spell out the whole book, but here’s what I think Libby Page did SO brilliantly: she didn’t rush Tilly into the next phase of her life and sweep her past with Joe under the rug to be forgotten. I think when readers know that a book involves romance, it can create impatience to get to the next good part, so to speak. Instead, she lets the reader sit with Tilly through that year of processing her grief as she takes inspiration from Joe’s gifts to try new things and figure out what this new life should look like. Romance plays a role, but it doesn’t play the main role in the bulk of the story, and that felt so much more believable and relatable.

Having said that - for those looking for romance, you won’t be disappointed. The level of sweetness in how that aspect of the story develops darn near melted my heart! I don’t think Page could’ve written that romance arc any more believably and sensitively than she did, and it was the yummiest icing on a perfectly baked cake!

This was an immersion read with my Kindle and the audio narrated by Zadeiah Campbell-Davies, who did a lovely job with the voicing and regulating the emotion of the story. I highly recommend both formats. This will be on my year-end favorites list!

★★★★★❤️

Thanks to Berkley Publishing, NetGalley and author Libby Page for this digital ARC to honestly review, and to Libby/my library for the audio. This is out now.