The Love Library

The idea of meeting the bookboyfriends of your favourite novels opens up so many possibilities. And I think that might have been the problem here. Rewriting the heroes of beloved classics is a lot of pressure. To do them justice without only copying what we already know, to give them a new twist while staying true to the original material – that’s a level of skill only fanfiction authors from the early 2010s can master. Also the book advertises this plot point as the main event, when it really just feels like two regular people having major communication issues while hanging out in a magical library. But hey, Heathcliff was great! The author seems to have a good sense of humour and enjoys having fun with these characters. For me the book felt too long, some things were repeated over and over again. And even as a Jane Austen stan myself, I was tired of reading her praise for the hundredth time. It was also a little heavy on the cringy millenial stuff. But it works as a fun read in between books.