The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

I love bookstores. They're like libraries without all the rules. Big, little, old, eclectic, even the book section at a big box store, or the "take one leave one" section at a B&B or hotel.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is like a little, eclectic bookstore. A.J., Amelia, Ismay, and Maya like little, short stories, life on Alice Island like a novella. Put them all together and you don't just get a novel, you get a collection of works, a neighborhood community, a place with history.

Good books are like good bookstores, you get lost and it's a good kind of lost.

The only thing better than a few stolen moments in a bookstore is finding and falling in love with a good book.

And the only thing better than finding and falling in love with a good book is reading it for the 2nd time.

This is my 2nd reading of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. The story is the same, of course, but the take-away is so much sweeter.

I may even read it a 3rd time.

Need I say more?

Well, maybe one thing:

I wish there was an Alice Island.