Not five stars because the seeing wasn't well established as San Francisco and yet portrayed as an important component, and apparently MC and her bf are black but that barely came up even when I would have expected it to matter in the story. There were some details that didn't seem consistent, like MC mentioning she had no idea what to do with Black hair, but later bf casually smooths it back into place. I have no idea what her hair looks like. 

Four stars because I thought about the book when I wasn't reading it, and the relationship between Nora and Beth reminded me a lot of my own similar relationship with a friend I started work with (and we have now since left). Their friendship was well built. There were lines and moments that made me laugh and smile. This book felt honest and accurate, as someone who went through some of this recently, and it makes sense that the author framed it on her own life as well. That authenticity shows on the story.

Got a free arc from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review. ( )

Checked out of library completely for the title and i read nothing about it so I expected this to be a romance/chick lit book but it turned out to be a much darker story about a young women struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts and how she’s trying to hold it together through a lot of job related woes and a budding romance with an author who seems great but represents a conflict of interest with her publishing job and career ambitions. ( )

The basic premises in the story didn't appeal to me. Sorry. ( )

I went into this book blind and I was expecting a lighthearted Romcom mingled with the love of books.
This book was realistic and deep, not light and fluffy like so many other romance books you come to know and expect.
The struggle of a woman who is an editor assistant with a dying publisher has to make hard choices in her life in order to survive.
Yes, there was a male counterpart; however, Nora realized she needed to find who she was first and love herself before getting truly involved with someone else.

This is such wise advice as the only person who can make you happy is yourself and not the love of another. Maybe the divorce rates wouldn’t be so high in this country if more people romanticized about themselves instead of others.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the gifted copy ( )

Must Love Books suffers from being marketed as a romantic comedy. Despite the pink cover, it isn’t. The romance is a subplot, but the main plot is about a woman in a job with increasing responsibilities in a workplace shrinking in terms of workers. Add to that a pay cut and things get desperate to survive. It’s not an overly happy book but the ending offers an element of hope. I found it lacked hooks to keep me reading, particularly when things got heavy.

The story is about Nora, a long-suffering editorial assistant for a publisher of business books. The company is undergoing a restructure and many people are leaving, willingly and unwillingly. Nora’s job has taken on the responsibilities of the books that are now editorless and managers on the other side of the country seem to think that she’s their assistant too. The last straw is a pay cut. Nora has no way of making ends meet unless she takes on a second job. So she pretends she’s left her day job to take on a freelance editor role for a rival publisher. It’s hard work with many late nights, bringing back her depression. She does make a friend in Andrew Santos, the last star author at her day job with it becoming something more. But Nora is caught when she is told she will get a promotion at her day job if she gets him to sign up his book; something she’s been planning to take to her second job as the prize to ensure she gets a full-time job.

The story is quite slow and lacks sparkle and subplots. It’s very realistic, but it doesn’t always make for interesting reading. (Not helped by the flawed marketing). Nora is a nice person I’m sure, but she doesn’t really make an interesting character. For all her worry about money, she seems to eat out a lot, buy drinks and the odd book. If her finances were so short that she couldn’t afford her rent, surely she wouldn’t be eating out so often? She is quite lost in terms of career and for the most part, doesn’t really do too much about it except taking on the second job (which she works on while at her first job’s workplace…pretty silly). She’s lost but she’s not really a likeable character. Andrew, her star author and friend/boyfriend, isn’t really detailed all that much. He’s meant to be nice, and the reader sees glimpses of that, but he’s not fleshed out beyond being a vehicle for Nora to use for her career/sounding board. Similar with Nora’s friends and colleagues – they are a sounding board for Nora and offer advice but we don’t really see much of them beyond that. It makes it difficult to keep reading when the main character isn’t someone you want to cheer for.

I found it difficult to motivate myself to pick up this book and read. The main plot of Nora’s lack of job satisfaction is repeated over and over. It’s nice to have multiple examples, but I think it would have improved the flow if Nora had been caught out a little earlier to allow for better resolution of her problems at the end of the novel. While the ending is very realistic, it’s not particularly satisfying with neither her job or relationship offering anything but a promising of a definite maybe. (An epilogue may have helped). The writing is solid and a faster paced story may have worked better for me.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )