The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jun 02, 2020 Karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have to say I was surprised to find that a book about a two bit down on its luck town in Iowa was translated from Swedish, but there it is. I assumed this was a down home American novel about a midwestern bookstore - which it is, I guess, but translated from Swedish. And written by a Swedish author who had yet to visit the US, much less the midwest.

It is a sweet enough story, Sara comes to Broken Wheel from Sweden to visit her pen pal Amy and the two plan to have a reading vacation. Unfortuna I have to say I was surprised to find that a book about a two bit down on its luck town in Iowa was translated from Swedish, but there it is. I assumed this was a down home American novel about a midwestern bookstore - which it is, I guess, but translated from Swedish. And written by a Swedish author who had yet to visit the US, much less the midwest.

It is a sweet enough story, Sara comes to Broken Wheel from Sweden to visit her pen pal Amy and the two plan to have a reading vacation. Unfortunately Amy dies days before Sara arrives. But the town had been expecting her and they rally around Sara and take care of her for their beloved Amy's sake. Sara finds that, in the absence of the friend she planned to spend her time with, she is going to need more than reading to fill her days so she asks the town to open a (visa friendly) bookstore for her to run. She isn't in any hurry to get back to Sweden and the life she never really created there and as time goes on she realizes that Broken Wheel is right where she needs to be.

I enjoyed the book for the most part but there were a few head scratching issues that keep me from rating it any higher. Book spoilers! As others have warned, read the list of books at the back before you start reading this book and if a title is mentioned that you haven't read and don't want to know the ending and/or plot twists, skip a page. She spoiled more than one book for me! And beyond that, I found the relationship between Sara and Tom utterly nonsensical. And since that relationship is the crux of the book, that was irritating for me. (view spoiler) And then out of no where a second romance was introduced late in the book, totally irrelevant to anything and poorly handled all around. Had that been edited out, the book would have been a manageable length and much better for it.

But all in, it was a sweet, light-hearted romp and a quick read. A fun distraction from the pandemic. Having spent two weeks in Ambrose, ND (pop. 25) in 2007 I found her rendering of small town life remarkably accurate. I see Bivald has a second book that was released in Jan 2020. I might give it a go. I wonder if she has yet visited the US of A. ...more

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Sep 14, 2017 ☼♎ Carmen the Bootyshaker Temptress ☼♎ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, z-sfrc-sept-nov-2017, z-2017-reads, fiction, womens-fiction-chick-lit, book-about-books

Rated 3.5 stars
I found this book to be ok. It talked about books which I love, of course, but I feel like there was something going on and it became too busy with it. I guess that's what happens in small town. Everyone has an input on who does what. All in all not a bad book. ...more

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May 07, 2017 Cecily Black rated it liked it · review of another edition

It took a bit for me to get into this book, I am not a huge fan of chick lit. It is a little slow for me and not much ever happens. The story was warm hearted and I basically only picked this up to fulfill a challenge but otherwise it might have been a DNF. I am glad I finished it because it turned out better than I thought.

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