Words of a Bibliophile

I picked this up because it was in the bargain pile and I noticed it was written by the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. I really liked Harold Fry, but I ended up loving this one. The story moves slowly at first, though, and some characters and situations can be frustrating. There are two plot lines, one in the past and one in the present, and at first I wondered how the two are connected. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just say I thought I'd made some pretty good guesses, but I was wrong, so wrong.

I was going to give the book four stars due to how the author made me empathize with the characters and the way she expertly handled the point of view of a child viewing a grown-up world, but then the twist near the end hit me and I nearly had tears in my eyes (which doesn't happen a lot when I'm reading books these days). Five stars from me, because Rachel Joyce broke my heart before putting it back together again. She got me good.