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THE BOOKSELLER'S SECRET

by Michelle Gable ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 17, 2021

Ultimately, the novel suffers from its split focus.

A London bookshop serves as backdrop to the lives and loves of two women from different centuries.

The novel toggles back and forth between the story of (real-life) struggling author Nancy Mitford’s life during World War II and present-day (fictional) struggling author Katharine Cabot’s transformative visit to London. When the novel opens on Nancy’s story, the war is in full effect, London is being bombed nightly, and Nancy has just taken a job working at the Heywood Hill bookshop. Nancy and her seven siblings are something of a legend: Of her five sisters, one is a Hitler sympathizer, one a fascist, one a communist, and one a duchess. Nancy takes up spying for the British government by befriending a French colonel who becomes both her lover and her most eager audience for stories of her life, inspiring her to finally write her first successful novel loosely based on her own dramatic family and upbringing. Katie, meanwhile, after a truly spectacular meltdown during a family celebration in Virginia, mostly driven by her frustration with writer’s block, travels to London. Visiting the same Heywood Hill bookshop, she meets a handsome stranger who believes Nancy Mitford wrote a memoir during World War II that was never published; he would love to get his hands on that manuscript because of a family connection to the story. Katie is quickly absorbed by both the mystery of the manuscript and the charms of the man himself, and their literary investigations also inspire her to break free of the constrictions of her life and writer’s block. Despite the complexity of the narrative structure, the novel seems somewhat one-note. The mysteries of the past are not overly gripping, though Nancy is an enjoyable character, as is the delightfully snooty Evelyn Waugh. But Katie elicits little deep interest, coming across as whiny and self-pitying.

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5258-1155-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Graydon House

Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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SEEN & HEARD

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2024

Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.

Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.

Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024

ISBN: 9780374602635

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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by Sally Rooney

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Review: The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable

“ The Bookseller's Secret is a delight from start to finish, a literary feast any booklover will savor!”—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code ARISTOCRAT, AUTHOR, BOOKSELLER, WWII SPY—A THRILLING NOVEL ABOUT REAL-LIFE LITERARY ICON NANCY MITFORD In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics. Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay. Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present… “With a vivid cast of unforgettable characters, Gable expertly and cleverly delivers wit, humor, and intrigue on every page. What a delightful escape.” —Susan Meissner, bestselling author of  The Nature of Fragile Things “A triumphant tale that highlights the magic of bookshops and literature to carry people through even the darkest days of war.”—Kristina McMorris, New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday

The secret that the bookseller is keeping forms a link between the lives of two women who are facing the same crisis in the same location – eighty years apart.

Both have had moderate success, along with a couple of books that sank nearly without a trace. In 1942, Mitford was still smarting from the failure of timing that was the publication of Pigeon Pie , a book lampooning the “Phoney War” of 1939. Unfortunately for Mitford, the book was released just as the Sitzkrieg became the Blitzkrieg, making the book not just passe but in very poor taste.

(The sinking of Pigeon Pie got a brief mention in another recent WW2 book set in a bookstore, The Last Bookshop in London , as the unsold copies got summarily returned to the publisher. If you liked that book you’ll probably like this one and vice versa.)

As each of the women crosses the threshold of Heywood Hill they are facing variations of the same crossroad. In the midst of the war, Mitford feels as if she’s lost both the time and the inclination to write. Katie, in the wake of multiple personal losses, isn’t sure she has it in her to write again, and is even less certain that it’s worth trying.

We follow their stories back and forth, from Nancy during the war years working in the bookshop to keep body and soul together in a material sense while worried that she’ll ever find time to write anything ever again. She’s somewhat desperately in search of both a few spare minutes a day to write and a muse to inspire her to write.

It’s that search for inspiration, or rather what she seems to have found to fill it, that links Mitford to Katie. Peter Bailey has scraps of evidence that Mitford was writing an autobiography about her war work with refugees, a story that would feature his own grandmother. He’s searching for the manuscript of that book – if it even exists.

Katie, who wrote her thesis on Mitford, is willing to help him search for that manuscript so she can continue procrastinating over her own empty pages. That Bailey is intelligent, interesting and incredibly handsome doesn’t impact Katie’s desire to help him in the slightest.

In the past, we follow Mitford during the war years – a period that she did not write about herself – as she uses that attempted autobiography to get out of her slump – even if it never sees the light of day.

In the present Katie uses her search for the manuscript and her flirtation with Bailey to inspire her to pick up her own pen – or in her case open her word processor.

While the current manager of Heywood Hill looks on and hopes that he is doing the right thing. It’s left up to the reader to be the judge of that!

Escape Rating A- : I was a lot more charmed by this than I expected to be, and also a lot less lost than I thought I might be. I have not read Mitford at all, so when I came into this the only background I had were some of the better-known historical bits, that her family was involved in leftist politics before, during and after the war. I did think this might be a bit more like The Last Bookshop in London than it turned out to be, so that reference to Pigeon Pie did link the two a bit.

My lack of background about Mitford wasn’t really an issue as this story is very much a “what if?” kind of story. It’s not biographical because little is known about Mitford’s activities during the war, particularly her work at Heyward Hill. So all of the parts from Mitford’s perspective are meant to look and sound and act like her, but may or may not bear huge resemblance to what she actually did during those years.

Whatever she truly did during the war, it’s clear that Nancy Mitford was a complex individual who mined the triumphs and tragedies of her life – and there were plenty of both – in her fiction. Her best known works, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate , both published after the end of the war, managed to tell and retell different variations of her life in a way that let her explore her past and possibly expiate it without making relationships with her family any worse or more strained than they already were.

But when this story takes place, those bestselling books weren’t even a gleam in the author’s eye. Her success was still in the future and her present was a bit bleak in more ways than one.

And that’s where Katie’s story comes in. She has one bestselling book under her authorial belt and zero inspiration for a second. She turns to Mitford for both comfort and inspiration, comfort in the re-reading of her favorites and inspiration because Mitford went through a 15-year dry spell and Katie’s isn’t nearly that long yet. What she hopes for but doesn’t expect to find is a way forward for herself in both her life and her art.

Both parts of this story weave the personal with the professional, the difficulty of getting out of a slump, the relentless pressures of time and just plain life in general, and the way that real life intrudes and inspires at the same time. Katie both feels for Mitford and gains perspective from her at the same time.

I think that’s the part that charmed me. Coming into this cold, so to speak, I didn’t have any preconceptions about Mitford so was able to see the ways in which the two women were alike in spite of the difference of nearly a century. Both independent, both sometimes bowed under the weight of other people’s expectations, both having an approach/avoidance conflict about their work and everything else in their lives. They seemed like sisters under the skin and I wanted a happy ending for them both, but on their terms. Mitford seems to have more or less gotten hers, so Katie definitely has a chance!

Because that bookseller kept his secret after all.

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The Bookseller’s Secret: A Novel of Nancy Mitford and WWII

Written by Michelle Gable Review by Ann Chamberlin

Scenes switch evenly between Katie, a self-doubting American writer who takes a break in London at Christmastime; and the world of Nancy Mitford, her fascinatingly fascist/communist family, and the British literary world during the Blitz.  Mitford is likewise doubting herself and providing hints of an unpublished manuscript hidden in the shop—which Katie and love interests hunt for.  The real-life book shop and surrounding neighborhood are drawn from Gable’s personal experience.

World War II and booksellers with hidden pages are perpetual favorites for readers of historical fiction.  Our modern heroine Katie, conveniently enough, wrote her thesis on Nancy Mitford, so when thesis-like details get dumped in dialogue instead of action and intrigue, we may forgive it.  The best read, however, comes in the author’s note at the end, which offers glimpses of events that would have, to my taste, been more engaging.  Indeed, what I came to these pages hoping for. Has the United States’ political divide become so serious that we must skate over such primal issues when they present themselves in one delightfully eccentric British family, in favor of some novelist’s angst in the interest of an offend-no-one bestseller?

This may be the perfect summer poolside read if you’re looking for the escape of a London Blitz whittled down to told, not shown, events that don’t matter so much.

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Friday 26 November 2021

Book review: the bookseller's secret by michelle gable.

Thanks for the blog tour support x

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I was given this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

It's no secret that I am a fan of historical fiction, so when I had a chance to review this book by author Michelle Gable, I grabbed it! 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.

Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…

I am a big fan of historical fiction, and because of that, I have certain beliefs surrounding how I think it should be written.  First, I want to learn something. So that means the author has to research extensively and provide little known information about the era being written about.  Second, dialogue and prose should be in somewhat equal portions. Descriptions of the time period should be elaborate and hint at the research the author did prior to writing. The dialogue should make me believe that I was there or witnessing this account. Third, the characters should be relatable or hateable.  Nondescript characters are not welcome. Even minor characters should have redeeming qualities around them.

So how did the author do? This was a dual time period book, with the author moving between time periods with relative ease. This book was set during The Blitz and I felt that the author skimmed over this fact somewhat. This was a grim time.  I didn't feel the author portrayed it as such.

Too much dialogue and not enough prose for me.  I needed more description of the bookshop then and now.  What an opportunity to show us the difference between the way business worked in the past!  The dialogue was somewhat predictable and I found myself skimming the chapters related to Katie and spending more time with the Mitfords. 

The characters in the present, Katie, Simon, JoJo... the one I most loved was Clive.  Does anyone else feel that way? This is what I mean about minor characters having a mark, Clive really showed how our kids are showing up in the world these days.  

Overall, I'd give the book a 3.5/5.0 stars and recommend it to my Mitford-loving friends. I would also be happy to read another book by this author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

SOCIAL LINKS:

Author website: https://michellegable.com/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MGableWriter  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mgablewriter/  

Q&A with Michelle Gable

Q: What's the "story behind the story" for The Bookseller’s Secret?  Why did you decide to write this book?

Q: What message do you hope readers take from the story?

Q: Do you have any specific writing rituals (favorite shirt, pen, drink, etc)

Q: Which character do you relate to the most?

Q: What can you tell us about your next project?

Q: What do you think drives authors to continue to find stories to tell set around WWII?

Q: How are you hoping readers will relate to this story?

Q: What’s something that you connected with personally as you researched and wrote this story?

Would you like to comment?

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Review: the bookseller’s secret by michelle gable.

MY THOUGHTS:

I’ve only read one of Michelle Gable’s books before THE BOOKSELLER’S SECRET, but I know for sure, this won’t be my last one! She hooked me from the very first page and never let me go! Michelle sure knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat while reading and I love when an author does that to me. THE BOOKSELLER’S SECRET is the story of two women who are living in two different timelines.

The twists and turns just keep coming. So much so, that you won’t be able to put THE BOOKSELLER’S SECRET until the very end. My emotions were all over the place while reading and as soon as I was finished, I immediately checked on Goodreads for more of her books! THE BOOKSELLER’S SECRET fictionalizes the story of Nancy Mitford, the socialite who becomes a novelist. She takes over a London bookshop and becomes involved with a French resistance fighter during World War II. I learned a lot about the Mitford Sisters while reading this story, who I knew nothing about.

Overall, THE BOOKSELLER’S SECRET is a book I can say nothing but fantastic things about. There is so much heart in Michelle’s writing that I was left with a huge smile on my face and my heart, very happy. All of the characters are very interesting and believable, so much so that I felt as if I’ve known them for a long time. I look forward to reading Ms. Gable’s previous books that I haven’t gotten to yet as well as her future ones. There is so much going on in this story, but Michelle does a wonderful job of weaving all the pieces together. All of the characters will have you feeling sad and then smiling on the same page. Once you finish devouring this story, you are going to want to tell everyone you know about this awesome book.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Graydon House-Harlequin through Netgalley. All opinions expressed are my own and were voluntarily given.

FROM GOODREADS:

From New York Times bestselling author Michelle Gable comes a dual-narrative set at the famed Heywood Hill Bookshop in London about a struggling American writer on the hunt for a rumored lost manuscript written by the iconic Nancy Mitford—bookseller, spy, author, and aristocrat—during World War II.

In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.

Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.

Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

MICHELLE GABLE is the New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment, I’ll See You in Paris, The Book of Summer, and The Summer I Met Jack. She attended The College of William & Mary, where she majored in accounting, and spent twenty years working in finance before becoming a full-time writer. She grew up in San Diego and lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, with her husband and two daughters. Find her at michellegable.com or on Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, @MGableWriter.

Author website:  https://michellegable.com/   Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MGableWriter   Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mgablewriter/

Bookshop.org:  https://bookshop.org/books/the-bookseller-s-secret-a-novel-of-nancy-mitford-and-wwii-9781525811555/9781525811555  

Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-booksellers-secret-michelle-gable/1138272507  

Google Books:  https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bookseller_s_Secret.html?id=eyX3DwAAQBAJ

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Booksellers-Secret-Novel-Nancy-Mitford/dp/1525806467

Kobo:  https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-bookseller-s-secret-1

Apple Books:  https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-booksellers-secret/id1527558782

Thank you for stopping by and have a stress free Monday!💜

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8 thoughts on “ review: the bookseller’s secret by michelle gable ”.

Terrific review Susan. This book sure looks good. I have not heard of it before or the author, so I will check this book out.

Thank you Wendy! I hope you get the chance to read it!☕🤗📚❤

Like Liked by 1 person

Damn! I don’t think I can resist this now.😕

Great review Susan. I am currently having a literary feast of historical fiction, but unfortunately this isn’t among them. But I am going to see if it is still available. ❤📚

Thank you Sandy!🤗📚💜

One thing I love about Historical Fiction is when I learn something new and it sounds like that is the case here. Wonderful review. 📚😁💖

Thank you Carla!🤗📚💜

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Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Book review: the bookseller's secret by michelle gable.

Goodreads says, " In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.   Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.   Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…"

Nancy Mitford is living in London during WWII. The city is currently being bombed and everything is a mess.  Nancy takes a job at the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war.  Nancy is known around town though; in fact, all of her siblings are notorious.  One of her sisters is a Hitler sympathizer, another is a fascist, and the other is a duchess, to just name a few.  Nancy takes the job at the bookshop because things with her husband aren't great, she needs the money, and she had to quit writing. All of this inspires her to start writing again.  Jump to present day, readers meet struggling author Katie.  While on her visit to London, she visits Heywood Hill bookshop and while there, she meets someone who convinces her that Nancy Mitford wrote a memoir and it went unpublished.  This man would like to find this memoir as it's important to him and his family.  Katie, who is up for anything at this point thanks to writer's block, helps him and as things progress, she is greatly intrigued by what she comes to find.  Michelle Gable's The Bookseller's Secret is a decent historical tale for those who enjoy stories focusing about strong real-life women and WWII.

I only knew a few things about Nancy Mitford before reading The Bookseller's Secret and I was really enamored with Nancy right off the bat.  I loved her gumption, her personality, and found her to be very entertaining, especially when she would interact with Evelyn Waugh. Nancy grew up in an aristocratic family. A few of her sisters have made a name for themselves politically as they have close ties to the Nazis.  However, Nancy wants to separate herself from them as she doesn't agree.  

Even though Nancy has come from a wealthy background, she has dealt with a lot.  She experienced multiple miscarriages that led to her hysterectomy, her marriage is a sham, her husband is off at war and she hasn't heard from him.   However, Nancy is still a charismatic person who wants to make her mark in life.  I loved that she took over Heywood Hill bookshop and I really enjoyed the depiction of the bookshop and its customers.  I also really liked the fact that she was a writer and overall, I found Nancy's story to be truly fascinating. 

To be honest with you, the dual timeline didn't really work for me in The Bookseller's Secret .  I did not care for Katie nor her pursuit of the missing manuscript mostly because I found her to be insufferable. She makes such a commotion at a family party and goes off the deep end (over nothing really) that I just found her to be like a petulant child.  I did not like the sections of the novel focusing on her even though I was curious about her literary investigations.

I do think that if The Bookseller's Secret focused only on Nancy or had a more likable present day narrator, it would have worked a bit better.  I will say that Nancy is such a larger than life person that she probably doesn't need a foil; in fact, she needs her own book. Nancy, and only Nancy's amazing life, brings this book's rating up a smidgen. 

So, with that said, do you enjoy books about real-life people? Have you heard about Nancy Mitford? Is The Bookseller's Secret on your TBR list? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. 

2 comments:

I generally enjoy dual timeline stories, but yeah, sometimes one of the timelines feels unnecessary. Seems like that in this case!

Yes, that definitely was! I would have enjoyed an entire book dedicated to Nancy. Thanks for visiting, Angela!

I really appreciate your comments. Thank you!

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