Book Review: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
Book Title: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
Author: Abbi Waxman
Purchase: Amazon
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Description from Goodreads:
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.
When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realize what a terrible idea that is?
Nina considers her options.
1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)
It's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
I bought this book because the protagonist, the titular Nina Hill, sounded just like me (apart from the newly discovered family) and honestly, “bookish” in the title is like catnip for me. Nina is an anxious, book-obsessed, cat-loving, somewhat judgmental introvert and I love her for it. I particularly love that while she’s self-described as people-averse, she still has a very full life. She leads too many book clubs to count, competes in a trivia league with three close friends, attends regular movie nights and book-related events with her trivia friends and colleagues, and even finds time both to date and get to know her new family.
If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is, which is why Nina is also an organization enthusiast. Adhering to a structured routine helps keep her anxiety in check. I love the glimpses into her organizational mind that we get through the inclusion of beautifully designed pages from her planner. While I clearly already found Nina relatable, the planner pages ratchet that relatability up several notches, particularly due to jotted-down goals like the doable “drink water,” ambiguous “get in shape,” and even more ambiguous “be productive.” Or recording meals as the guy she starts dating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Live your best life, girl!
However, it isn’t all sunshines and rainbows. Or rather, Austen references and rumination on foot-in-mouth pronouncements. Nina’s blossoming relationship with Tom doesn’t add much to the novel. The two share a strong physical attraction and I would’ve been totally fine with it being left at that. Unfortunately, we never actually get to understand what the two like about each other outside of pheromones. At one point, Tom witnesses Nina have a full-on panic attack and he says some nice words about liking her, anxiety and all, but like… so what? He thinks she’s quirky and she thinks he’s hot but not bookish enough. So I was fairly shocked when not only does Tom refer to himself as her boyfriend after a couple weeks of barely hanging out, but when the two share — record scratch — random declarations of love by the end of the novel. Hard pass.
Another oddity is that while the novel is largely written from Nina’s perspective, some paragraphs randomly switch to Tom’s perspective, then switch back to Nina’s. The perspective switch is jarring and doesn't add value. I imagine it was a request from an editor who also wondered why Tom was into Nina, aside from her pretty red hair and adorable smallness (his inner thoughts frequently mention her small stature which, again, odd), but having insight into Tom’s horny brain doesn’t really solve this issue.
Aside from the strange POV-swapping, the writing style is fun and comedic, giving us insight into Nina’s inner monologue with such narration as, “[Nina] turned into her favorite cafe to grab a gluten-free low-fat bran muffin. Just kidding, it was a chocolate croissant.” Her frequent word-vomiting ensures I feel seen in the most embarrassing way possible. Take this line, which could be pulled literally verbatim from my own life: “Nina flailed around for a comment. ‘Cool beans.’ At this her brain threw up its metaphorical hands and curled up on its stem like a pissed-off hen. I’m not playing anymore, it said. If the mouth isn’t going to wait for my advice, I’m done.” Isn’t that a fantastic mental image? Or how about this absolute gem spoken to the object of Nina’s affection: “You smell of wood.” Like, does Abbi Waxman live inside my brain?
The star relationships of the book are really Nina’s new relationships with her father’s family. Having never known her father, Nina learns his identity through a lawyer who reaches out to her about her bequeathment in her late father’s will. She learns she has an extensive family living in her hometown of Los Angeles when her nephew Peter, who happens to be about the same age as Nina, reaches out. From there, she gets to know her half-siblings, particularly the 30-year-old Archie and 10-year-old Millie, as well as her prickly and suspicious cousin Lydia, who thinks Nina is pretending to be related to them to steal their money.
In each of these family members, Nina finds a feeling of familiarity and a piece of herself. While she genuinely enjoys being alone, she also realizes that spending time with her found family can be just as enjoyable as time spent with herself. It’s pretty freaking sweet and had me wishing for my long-lost family to pop out of the woodwork. That said, I also really appreciate the emphasis on chosen families in this novel. This line captures that theme perfectly: “Now, as an adult, she’d come to the conclusion that her mother being away all the time had probably been a blessing. Her nanny, Louise, had been a wonderful mother, and her mother had been a wonderful photographer. Biology is not a destiny, and love is not proportionate to shared DNA.”
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill is a super quick read. It’s primarily dialogue-driven and there are plenty of lines that cause me to literally laugh out loud. That said, the ending is way too perfectly tidy for me — the final 40 pages pulled me out of the otherwise realistic story. Still, I’d recommend it as a fun read for all you book-loving introverts looking for an easy contemporary read.
