Predictable but nostalgic enough in its literary riddles and references to still be charming.
Summary:
As a child, Miranda grew up idolizing her adventurous uncle. He went on trips around the world, bought the best presents, and created the most clever scavenger hunts for her. Then one day, Uncle Billy vanished from her life. Years later, Miranda receives a mysterious note along with the news that her uncle has died and left her his beloved bookstore, Prospero Books. It could mean only one thing: one final scavenger hunt, one quest to reveal what drove Billy away. Miranda returns to Los Angeles to save the bookstore from debt and to discover the clues to her family's past hidden throughout the store's shelves of novels.
Verdict: 6/10
If there's one setting a reader gravitates towards, it's a building full of books. Meyerson takes what she knows her audience will innately want to save and puts it at the forefront of the action. The bookstore becomes a character in a sense with a history, a personality made up of its workers and regulars, and the love of the main protagonist intent on coming to its rescue.
Meyerson also knows that readers love other books too. She crafts the main scavenger hunt around literary classics that everyone knows and loves so that you're experiencing nostalgia along with the thrill of the chase. In that sense, I loved puzzling through the clues to see which novel they would lead me to.
But the problem was, I was more interested in the actual clues than the mystery at large. I didn't care for the truth those riddles were leading to about the fight between him and his sister... because I had figured it out in the first chapter.
I adore Shakespeare, so having his play be the center and inspiration for the story is great. Except, if you know The Tempest, you know exactly what the twist is is likely to be. 'What's in a name?' Everything! And even if you're not a Bard-buff, it's still pretty obvious.
Really, most of the plot was plain and predictable. From the very start, the author describes Miranda's athletic boyfriend Jay as wonderful but irksome, inattentive, and not very well matched to his girlfriend's bookish self. So it's no surprise that when she meets the store manager with "striking eyes" and a "frustratingly smooth attitude", we all know where this is going. The same goes for the bookstore and her parents and pretty much all of the characters in the story.
We all know what's coming, but we still like to know how it plays out. And there's something to be said for simplicity. I'm less critical of plots and characters when the story centers around literature and the people that love it. For that, I look past most of the flaws. Novelistic riddles and charming bookstores just have a way of snagging this English-major's heart.
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