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Nora has been an editorial assistant at a publishing company for five years. When she first applied for the job at Parsons, it seemed like a dream job: working with books, helping authors. But the realities of the day-to-day work combined with the fact that Parsons puts out boring business books, along with the recent frequent cuts to staff, have sucked any potential “dream” out of the job. When her close friend decides to leave the company for a better option, Nora feels particularly adrift.
When her salary, already barely enough to cover her living expenses, is cut, Nora is desperate. So she takes a part-time side job at a rival publisher, an ethically questionable but financially necessary move, and her life gets pretty complicated. Nora hopes to be able to move over to the rival publisher — and potentially work in fiction — if she can prove herself. But the unnerving balancing act gets even more complicated when bestselling author Andrew Santos gets thrown into the mix. He befriends her at Parsons, and their relationship turns into more than friendship.
But she can’t tell him the truth about what she’s doing; she could lose her job(s) and their budding romance.
Nora feels overwhelmed, out of her depth, and stalked once again by the demons of depression and even suicide. She’d thought she was on the path to a dream job, but now nothing seems right, or within reach. And as much as she likes Andrew, and as good as he is to her, she feels she can’t have a healthy relationship with him because she feels in such a fog. As Nora’s unbalancing act topples, she feels lonely, scared and depressed, but she also begins to find just how many people are truly there for her and willing to help her find her way.
Must Love Books is a romance book for adults that brings readers right along on that tough journey of young adulthood where it seems everyone else has it together and knows where they’re going but you. It touches on mental health and the need to lean on kind friends and to take advantage of professional help. It’s a sweet and real story that many will be able to relate to. (For a romance book with some similar themes, check out A Happy Catastrophe.)
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes 4 uses of strong language, a handful of instances of moderate profanity, a dozen uses of mild language, and about 10 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There is kissing and sex, but sex is mostly implied with few details.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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