Book Review: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

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Book Title: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

Author: Abbi Waxman

Release Date: 9th July, 2019

Publisher: Berkley

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Goodreads Synopsis

The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.

When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They’re all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She’ll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It’s a disaster! And as if that wasn’t enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn’t he realize what a terrible idea that is?

Nina considers her options.

1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)

It’s time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn’t convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It’s going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.

My Thoughts

I had no expectations whatsoever before picking this book. I hadn’t even seen the synopsis before I did. I just saw Bookish on the title from a review on Lisa’s story and I knew instantly I wanted to read it. Just because it had bookish. Now, I’m no bookworm in any sense. I just love to read books and I think they’re two different things. When I started reading this book, I was a bit confused as to the way it was introduced because of the title of the first chapter ; In Which We Meet Our Heroine and Witness the Crime of Thoughtlessness. It was when I kept reading I realized it was how the author introduced every chapter, telling us what it entails. It’s just like any other way in books I guess, but this was so cool to me.

So, the first chapter, like it said, introduced me to Nina and I fell in love with her instantly. I couldn’t stop reading. It was like reading about this cooler version of myself lol. Nina loves books, she works at a bookstore and has been living alone for quite some time. Her mother never had much time for her because she was a photographer who was always busy and she never knew her father. So, Nina was at home with a Nanny for most of her young years until she could afford living alone. Besides being Bookish, Nina loves to spend time with her friends playing trivia, she volunteers sometimes or try to keep up with yoga. She has a cat who she’d prefer talking to, to any other human being and she likes to make lists, create moodboards and bullet journal. I love how the author shows us the lists and planners at the end of each chapter. It’s so creative and fun the way it’s put and I sort of adopted it at the time of reading the book.

Nina loves to be in control of her life because if she isn’t, her anxiety is going to take over and she doesn’t want that. She plans ahead as much as possible and makes sure everything is detailed. She’d rather have a fling than go into a relationship with someone, that’s how bad and should I say awesome (the fling part) it is. So far, she was very much in control until she got the news of the death of (unknown) father. She didn’t know she had siblings and was an aunty as well. We get introduced to each one of the family members through out the book and how Nina finds out she has so much in common with some of them. We follow her throughout the book as she tries to navigate this new chapter of her life and tries to be in control of her emotions. There’s a hint about romance but it wasn’t heavily touched upon.

My favourite part about this book was Nina, obviously. I loved reading about her and relating to her on almost everything. Another thing about the book is that it’s packed with humor, lots of it. I couldn’t stop laughing or smiling and while it was mostly funny, it was also thoughtful and entertaining at some point.

I’d like to thank the author for many of the pop culture references. My God, where do I start from? Besides the Harry Potter or Star Wars references, there were so many others on books, movies, music and so much more. I think that was one of the many realistic things about the book. I love that every character got their moments to shine, while the story is mostly about Nina and written in the third person, no character was left out. The romance aspect of the book wasn’t so bad, I didn’t pick the book up for that reason so it was a bonus.

Nina’s need to stay organized and the way she wrote her lists were very relatable. Nina was so much more than her anxiety and bookish ness. She didn’t have any problems being bookish or not extroverted like most people would be and she was fine and loud (not in the literal sense) about it, that was what I loved most about her. I try to tell myself sometimes that I don’t have to be too spontaneous or a little extroverted to fit in. Reading about Nina trying to make room in her life for new family members and a potential partner was such a delight. I had no problems whatsoever with this. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d definitely be checking out more of Abbi’s books.

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If you’re looking for something light and fun as well as thoughtful to read, check it out. If from my review or the book synopsis, this book feels like it’s something you’d enjoy, check it out too. Add it to your TBR. If you’ve read it, did you enjoy it? Let me know your thought please.

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Thanks for reading.

Stay safe.