I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. I liked the characters and they felt fairly realistic. I liked the small village feel with the quirky characters. I was rooting for the main character Jess to make some friends and not be so lonely. The book was fairly clean. I read it on vacation so I wasn't paying as much attention, I think there was some blasphemy and maybe some mild profanity but I don't think there was much because I would usually notice a lot of that. There was some kissing but that was as far as it went. It was just a really sweet story. I look forward to reading some more by this author. ( )

I loved this book, I needed an easy to follow story, loveable characters and the book of books were the icing on the cake. A librarian, Jess Metcalf loses her beloved grandmother, Mimi. Mimi took over raising Jess when her parents died in a terrible auto crash.

Jess loved her librarian job but she also loses because the low budget. She takes a drive to another town and is enchanted by the sweet looking cottage for sale. She makes a quick decision to buy. But what will she do when her money gets low and there are no nearby positions avaiiable, How will she deal with deep grief over her grandmother? A beginning romance, getting to meet the neighbors. It is a very comfortable book that you will want to read on a rainy evening. ( )

Ugh. I DNF'd half way through and am seriously regretting the money and time I spent. Flat, cookie cutter characters; boring, cookie cutter story. There is literally no plot here. ( )

The Littlest Library by Poppy Alexander
Contemporary romance. Slow burn, closed door. Women’s contemporary fiction.
After her Grandmother’s death, and a job loss, Jess Metcalf decides on a new beginning, and purchases a tiny cottage in the English countryside. After she moves in, Jess finds bats in her attic that are protected and can’t be moved, the sound of mice in the kitchen cabinets and a phone booth in her yard that must be usable by the local community. Jess has quite a few boxes of books from her grandmother and since she was a librarian in the past, using the old phone booth as a community library is the perfect option

The story follows Jess and her new neighbors as she befriends them, opens the library and gets involved with the community. There are poignant memories from hand written notes in the unboxed books. There are community engagement moments that show generosity and there are blooming romance and family notes that lend depth to the story.
Engaging and pleasurable. ( )

Orphaned at a young age, our protagonist, thirty-two-year-old Jessica “Jess” Metcalfe was raised by her maternal grandmother, her loving “Mimi”, who instilled in her a love for books and reading. Having encountered tragedy at such a young age, Jess prefers her life to be predictable and safe. However, when tragedy strikes and Mimi passes away from a terminal illness and a few months later Jess loses her job as a librarian at the local library where she had been working for the past eleven years, Jess is forced to rethink her life and start over. A series of events has Jess moving to the village of Middlemass, purchasing the quaint but rundown Ivy Cottage which comes with an abandoned red telephone box on the property. With the support of her immediate neighbors, among whom is single father Aidan Foxworthy, the phone box is transformed into a little lending library stocked with books from Jess and Mimi’s personal collection. As the story progresses, we see how the “littlest library” brings a community closer and how Jess forges new friendships and finds her place in the community, and entertains the possibility of a new romance, gradually opening up to new experiences. But as her savings start to dwindle and her little library faces opposition from a local group, her need to secure her future and find a new job becomes more urgent, she is forced to make some difficult choices – to leave her new home and the people who have become like family or to retreat into the predictable, safe (and boring) life to which she has been accustomed.

“The only answer to the fear of losing everything is to open up to the possibility of happiness and the possibility of loss. Two sides of the same coin, isn’t it? Better that, than refusing to be happy just in case.”

With a promising premise and a quirky cast of characters, Poppy Alexander’s The Littlest Library is a sweet story about friendship, kindness, community and of course the transformative power of books. The romance between Aidan and Jess was more of a secondary thread (at times, it felt like an afterthought) that did not feel integral to the central plot. Therefore I would not categorize this as a “romance” novel. I loved the idea of a little library in an abandoned phone box and enjoyed reading about how the “book-starved” community embraces not only the “littlest library” but also the newcomer who manages it into their fold. I also adored the literary references and how Mimi’s personal notes/ words of wisdom in the library books have a positive impact on the lives of others. There are many characters and quite a few sub-plots woven into the narrative. Though parts of the narrative were quite engaging, it was hard to plod through the repetition and slow pace in some segments. Stories such as these are almost always predictable (no complaints about that!) so it's important how we get to end and that's where this book falls short. I love books about books and libraries and while that particular angle was well-executed, a few of the other threads in the story felt rushed and resolved without much happening in between (a lot happens behind the scenes and the outcomes are simply conveyed to the reader). Overall, though a nice story , it was just an average read! ( )