Book Lovers

Two years later, Nora is catching up with her younger sister, Libby, who is pregnant with her third child. The two girls were raised in the West Village of New York City by their mother, who is now dead. Libby is worn out by motherhood, and Nora notices that she has not been the same for the past six months. They are drifting apart, and Libby doesn’t confide in Nora.

Meanwhile, Nora’s pattern of being dumped for the rural girls that her boyfriends meet on their travels continues. Libby marvels that this event has happened three times; however, Nora knows the correct number is actually four, and she does not want to think about what happened with a man named Jakob. Still, Nora is thriving in her career and proved Charlie wrong as Once in a Lifetime became a hit.

Libby surprises Nora by producing plane tickets to Sunshine Falls, insisting that they both need to get away and remember who they were before their family and career responsibilities. She jokes that Nora can imitate her exes and fall in love with a rural man. Nora agrees, since the publishing industry slows down in August.

On the airplane, Libby produces a list—inspired by romance novels and movies—of all the small-town things the sisters must do while in Sunshine Falls. Getting Nora dates with local men is a top priority. Libby reminds Nora that opposites attract and lists Jakob and his cowboy wife as an example. This is a painful memory for Nora, and she seeks to repress it. Nora is afraid of following the pattern of her actress mother, who always fell head over heels in love and whose romances always ended badly. Their to-do list also includes saving a local business.

The man who picks them up from the airport looks like Santa Claus and thinks that they must have relatives in Sunshine Falls, as there would otherwise be no reason for them to visit. The house is in the middle of nowhere and includes a steep uphill climb. Pregnant Libby orders Nora to go out and get food for them. While Nora thinks the town’s white-stone facades are like something from Once in a Lifetime, she notices that the interiors are run-down and neglected. Finally, she finds a general store with people in it and goes in.

Inside the building, Nora sees a gorgeous, rugged rural type of man, the male equivalent of the archetype her exes fell in love with. Then, she spots another good-looking man in line. To her surprise, it is Charlie Lastra. To verify his identity, Nora begins sending him an email chain. Charlie answers immediately, and Nora sends him over a book about Bigfoot erotica from her slush pile.

Back at the cottage, Libby cannot believe this news, and they speculate about what Charlie is doing in town. They settle down to a night of watching Katharine Hepburn movies, in the tradition of their mother, who used them as a remedy for getting over heartbreak. However, neither sister ever needed this remedy, as Libby settled down at 20, and Nora has “approximately one romantic bone in my body” and began to think of dating as a job interview after the disappointment with Jakob (48). She realizes that Libby’s troubles stem from outgrowing her city apartment and not being able to afford anything new. Nora tries to find a new apartment for her. Meanwhile, she gets an email from Charlie, and they spar about the merits of Once in A Lifetime and their nicknames in the publishing industry. While Charlie’s is “Storm Cloud,” Nora’s is “the Shark” (51). Although the name comes as a surprise to Nora, she is proud of her reputation for excellence. Nora admits that she was late to their first meeting because she received bad news just before it, and Charlie acknowledges that he does not make the best first impression. She is surprised to find that their conversation has the playful energy of flirtation.

Nora dreams that her mother is still alive. Her mother was a poor homeschooled girl who fell in love with her father, a wealthy prep-school boy, and got pregnant by him at 17. When he left her while she was pregnant with Libby, providing her a scant sum of money, she moved to New York City with her daughters. The girls are estranged from their father.

After this dream, Nora struggles to sleep and goes on a jog. There, she sees the original “coffee shop Adonis” talking to a horse and stumbles on a root (59).

Later, in the supermarket, Libby insists that they buy hair dye and get makeovers. While Libby dyes Nora’s hair back to its original ash-brown color and gives her feathery bangs, Nora dyes Libby’s pink. Libby loves it.

Nora sends Charlie her phone number, and she and Libby go into town. They order food, and Nora is having a dirty martini when an email comes through from Dusty showing part of her new manuscript, Frigid. The heroine is a film agent named Nadine Winters whose nickname is “The Shark.” Nadine is controlling and cold, and she prioritizes results over enjoyment. Nora fears that Nadine is a thinly veiled version of herself. Drunk and vulnerable, Nora searches for Libby; however, instead, she barrels into Charlie as she falls.

Charlie is surprised to see her there, and Nora protests that she is in Sunshine Falls on vacation and not stalking him. Charlie tells her he is from Sunshine Falls. She tells him about Dusty’s new book and the character of Nadine Winters.

Over a beer with Charlie, Nora finds herself softening and slips into a compliment about his “amber” eyes before retracting it (83). She realizes that she is attracted to Charlie and is stuck between wanting to control herself and longing to throw caution to the wind in order to avoid being like Nadine. Charlie claims he can read Nora “like a book” because they are both the same (86). Nora asks why Charlie hates Once in a Lifetime so much and speculates that he might be Old Man Whittaker, a character with a secret that forces him to close himself off from love and joy. They order more alcohol.

Charlie challenges Nora to a game of pool, stating that if he wins, she must tell him why she’s on vacation in Sunshine Falls, and if she wins, he will tell her why he was so awful on the day they met. After three games, Charlie wins, and Nora tells him that she is on vacation to support her sister; however, she drunkenly blurts out the unfortunate pattern of her dating life, where men leave her for wholesome rural women. She does, however, conceal what happened with “patient zero” novelist-turned-rancher Jakob, judging that it is best left behind “in the smoking crater that changed my life” (95). Charlie jokes that Libby’s plan is to marry Nora off to a pig farmer, they spar further, and she feels attracted to him. Nora learns that Charlie was trying to catch an emergency flight on the day they met because his father had a stroke. He also tells her he just had another one, so Charlie returned home to try to help his family, although his father didn’t even tell him about his most recent stroke. Nora tells him about her own absentee father. Nora feels like kissing Charlie. It is raining, and Charlie insists that they can share his umbrella when Nora resists his offer of a cab home.

Charlie affirms that the place where Nora and Libby are staying is his parents’ rental cottage. As Nora’s heels are unsuitable for the climb to the house in the rain, he gives her a piggyback ride. Meanwhile, Charlie confesses that he is sleeping in his childhood racecar bed. Nora realizes that they are both wearing the same gender-neutral cologne called BOOK. They kiss and make out when they arrive at the cottage, but they suddenly realize what they are doing and feel that they will sabotage their careers if they have a relationship with each other. Charlie says that he cannot get involved, and Nora says that they should pretend this never happened.

Nora decided never to fall in love after her mother was dumped by a showrunner who then had her character killed off and shoved into a meat locker. Nora’s only divergence from this rule was Jakob, whom she fell in love with and moved in with. However, when her mother died, she moved back in with Libby and did whatever she could to make ends meet. When Jakob got into a Wyoming writers’ residency, he left, and then “there was the breakup, the utter desolation, the reminder of why the promise I’d made to myself years ago still mattered” (110). Nora refused to talk about Jakob and went through a period of dating only to get a free meal and potentially take some food home to Libby. The numbness in her heart enabled her to focus on work and build an independent existence, apart from feeling responsible for her sister. After that, she dated in a controlled manner and did not have casual hookups until Charlie Lastra.

Libby disapproves of the idea of Nora and Charlie dating because she feels that Charlie is too much like the city men Nora dates. Nora goes off to search for Wi-Fi, grateful that at least things seem more normal now between her and Libby.

The only place in Sunshine Falls with Wi-Fi is the bookshop where Charlie is working while he continues his editing work remotely. Meanwhile, Sharon, the editor who planned to work on Frigid, has given birth prematurely, so Charlie asks to work on the project. Nora worries about working so closely with him after their intimate moments and also fears that his blunt ways may destroy her client’s confidence. Libby is worried about Charlie distracting Nora from finding a wholesome local man, but, at the same time, she wants to help save the bookshop as part of the goal on their checklist of saving a local business. Nora agrees to try and negotiate with Dusty.

Dusty is put off by the idea of Charlie editing her current book, as he rejected her previous one. However, she eventually agrees, provided Nora agrees to supervise Charlie’s work with her own edits. Nora and Libby settle into a routine that includes Nora going to the bookshop to use the Wi-Fi while avoiding Charlie’s glances. Nora meets Charlie’s mother, Sally, and Sally later texts her son to say that Nora seems pretty and eligible. Charlie adds that his mother has long been disappointed in him but does not elaborate. They exchange humorous texts about the Bigfoot erotica from Nora’s slush pile.

Libby has created an online profile for Nora on a dating app called Marriage of Minds, or MOM. Nora instantly knows that the date Libby has set up for her with Blake, a homespun local boy, will go badly. They are to meet at Poppa Squat’s for karaoke night. Nora is reluctant but agrees to go, if only to avoid behaving like her caricature, Nadine. The date goes terribly after Blake fixates on Nora’s height and asks if she is a model. She orders alcohol to help her get through it.