Synopsis:
Explore its many rooms, pick something nice off the shelf, and have a little read by the fire at the Cozy Quill Bookshop.
Running from strife in her homeland, Maribella Waters becomes the new owner of the fabled Cozy Quill. After finding squatters on her property, she employs Asteria Helsdottir, a giant, barbarian warrior woman more accustomed to swinging an axe than opening a book. Together, the odd couple must make a success out of the bookshop—and survive a dizzying procession of seasonal festivals.
But the local evil noblewoman has other plans in mind. Threatened with being run off the land, Maribella and Asteria must use their wits to outsmart Lady Malicent and keep their business open. Along the way, the whole town lends a hand, friendships are forged, and mysteries are revealed.
Review:
I put The Bookshop and the Barbarian on my winter to be read because it sounded very cosy and even claims to be, so imagine my disappointment when I don’t get too far in and have to put it down.
I’m not one to give up on books very easily but I just could not continue The Bookshop and the Barbarian. The second chapter uses the phrase ‘murder-hobo’ constantly and honestly what the hell? Just before it used this phrase, there were multiple instances of the “narrator” telling you to “check your prejudice because you definitely imagined this character as fat because I said they were lazy”. Nope, that didn’t happen. The author is the one who made that assumption. Make it make sense because I can’t.
I could see what the author was trying to do with the narrator breaking the fourth wall, sadly this wasn’t enjoyable for me. They tried too hard to make it funny when just breaking the fourth wall in general is already quite funny. There’s a very fine line between good and cringeworthy narration and this book is the latter, unfortunately.
This book potentially gets better the further you get into it, but I don’t have time to waste on bad books.
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