The Bookstore Family (The Once Upon a Time Bookshop Stories)

by Alice Hoffman

“Happiness is for idiots,” Violet remarked flatly.

“That makes sense. You’re an American and happiness is an American concept.”

I’m happy because I stopped trying to be someone I wasn’t, Isabel wanted to say to her niece, but she didn’t dare. There are some things you must learn for yourself, and how to find happiness is one of them.

Every time a book is reread it’s entirely different depending on who the reader has become.

“I’m a reader,” he told her. “There are worse things to be.”

She had forgotten how books could open the world and make it seem brand new. She’d forgotten that if you accepted the fact that anything might happen, it actually might. You might find a coin on the sidewalk that could grant your wishes, you might drink coffee with a stranger and tell him the story of your life, and when you left you might buy a dozen more books, the ones you loved most, the ones you read when you were ready to step into another life, the one where it just might be possible to have an open heart.

Violet wondered if this was how it happened: one moment you were strangers, and the next you wanted to tell someone the entire story of your life.