The best way to describe this book is just...nice. It was nice.

Set in a sleepy English village, librarian assistant June finally has to find some courage and stand up for what she believes in when the library she works in is threatened with closure by the local council. Featuring a cast of 'quirky' characters, she has to operate incognito or risk losing her job altogether.

You can tell this is a debut novel. It feels very messy and the characters really aren't very differentiated. They all felt like huge caricatures of people you would imagine live in a small rural village and get up in arms about library closures. I did want to slap the main character multiple times purely for just how spineless she was. I get anxiety, girl, but that is something else altogether. There were lots of different threads in this novel and there were moments that very clumsily written and put together.

I can appreciate some of the themes involved, but I didn't particularly enjoy reading this book. It felt very saccharine and schmaltzy, even though there wasn't a traditional happy ending. It's also difficult to find sympathy for characters who seem completely up their own arses, which unfortunately some of them were.

There's an audience for this book. There's one for every book! I am just not that audience. I think I had expectations for this novel that just didn't come through. But someone will enjoy it, I'm sure.