Ooh, my first Emily Henry book, and I really liked it. Our main character Nora Stephens is a literary agent in NYC, and her only focus outside of her job is her younger sister, Libby. Nora has been dumped multiple times by romantic partners who founds new loves in small towns, and the book plays with these tropes when Libby asks Nora to go on essentially a sisterly babymoon to Sunshine Falls, NC. While there, Nora runs into editor Charlie Lastra, whom she had previously met and did not have a positive first impression of. It turns out he is originally from Sunshine Falls.
I loved the jobs that Nora and Charlie have and the way they talk about books, especially the one they are working on together because Charlie is the editor for a book that Nora is representing as agent. They have good banter, and they work well together, once Nora moves on from her first impression. That was actually the only part that I disliked about this. Unless I missed something (and despite what the book synopsis says), they only ever actually met one time. It didn’t go well, and I know first impressions can be meaningful, but Nora seems to have come to a lot of unkind conclusions based on that one meeting (e.g., “. . . I assumed you went into a broom closet and entered power saving mode whenever you weren’t at work”). But I got over that about as quickly as Nora got over her grudge.
This is about as much a love story between sisters as it is between Nora and Charlie. Nora and Libby have always been close, especially after their mom died, and Nora feels she has to take care of Libby. She’s made sacrifices for Libby, but now it feels like there’s some distance between them. Nora is trying to figure out why that is, and ultimately they learn to start navigating more of a sisterly relationship than a caretaking one. Libby is an outgoing, bubbly character, and one of my favorite parts of the book is when she sings a “rendition of ‘My Favorite Things,’ but replacing all of the listed things with her own preferences: Books with no dog ears and shiny new covers, cleaning and shelving and reading ’bout lovers!”
I enjoyed this romance novel and plan to read more Emily Henry in the future.