The Bookshop of Yesterdays

The Bookshop of Yesterdays
Amy Meyerson
Park Row (June 12, 2018), 368 pages
Kindle edition $9.49, Amazon paperback $10.29

The Amazon page for this novel notes that it was included in the summer reading list of a couple of different publications, and that’s really what it is: something of a summer reading title, even though I read the book in late winter.

Miranda, the protagonist whose story is told in the first person, returns home to Los Angeles from her teaching job and boyfriend in Philadelphia when her uncle Billy dies and leaves her the bookstore he owned. Billy loved games and scavenger hunts even when Miranda was a child, and he had set up a scavenger hunt for her before his death to explain to her why he left her the bookshop, and to reveal to her something that she didn’t know about her own personal history. The clues he leaves are quotes from a wide range of literature.

There is a plot twist, which makes perfect sense once you get there, but the book rather falls apart after that revelation. It does recover enough, however, for a fairly satisfying ending.

Nothing heavy or profound here, but an enjoyable diversion.