More Than Nerds: Sharks Mate for Life

Book people are the best people (yes, even better than fashion people).  So, when I started reading Emily Henry's latest, Book Lovers, I knew I was in for the kind of banter that burgeons between people who make their living in letters.

New York City publishing powerhouses Nora-named-for-Nora-Ephron Stephens and Charlie Lastra are an odd couple.  No, she's not a loveable kook whereas he's an acquired-taste curmudgeon, nor is she the straitlaced sophisticate to his irresistible man child.  Instead, both can be kindly described as stick-in-the-mud corporate sharks.  Although to be fair, only Nora is actually nicknamed The Shark.  So yeah, no Oscar, two Felixes.  In other words, these two are made for each other.

Not that they see it that way.  Or are even a couple.  Nora thinks that she's finally escaped her cold-hearted colleague when she and her sister land in rural North Carolina for some summer R&R.  But then Charlie rears his oh-so-handsome head just as Nora is hate-texting him, throwing her lazy vacay -- and her plans to snag a Hallmark hometown hottie -- for a loop.  Still, both Nora and Charlie are too prickly for most people to understand let alone tolerate, so it isn't long before they realize that they're cut from the same page proofs.  Not since Gone with the Wind has a story made such a strong case for "like goes with like."  So fine, they like each other.  But why should we like them?  (The last time I checked, people want to swim with dolphins, not sharks.)  Because they're book people.  And behind every book person is someone who's been hurt and found what she needed in fiction.  Nora puts it best:

"Daily life was unpredictable, but the bookstore was a constant.  In winter, when our apartment was too cold, or in summer, when the window unit couldn't keep up, we'd go downstairs and read in the shop's coveted window seat.  Sometimes Mom would take us to the Museum of Natural History or the Met to cool down, and I'd bring my shredded copy of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler with me and think, If we had to, we could live here like the Kincaid siblings." (225)

It's the rare book that can drop inconvenient trope truths and retain its lighthearted status, but Book Lovers does it with style.  Because although it isn't easy for everyone to accept that opposites don't always attract, not all career women are heartless, and sometimes small towns are more depressing than darling, Henry shows us the world as it is but also as we'd like it to be, through the spell of her snarky-sweet prose.

Oh Henry, you've done it again.