This book is just fantastic, I absolutely adored our main characters and their enemies to lovers storyline full of plot twists.
As someone about to open an indie bookshop this whole story had so many bits I was highlighting and chuckling about.
The author has created a whole believable storyline, so much so I'm convinced both shops exist and if I jump on a plane I could go and visit.
Definitely recommending this one to anyone who loves books, bookshops, cute love story's and frustrating MCs!

A nice little, simple to follow story, was a little slow to follow at times and i didn't really adhere to the characters. But, never one to be defeated I stuck with it until the end and thought all in all it was ok.

A bookshop themed slow burn rom com that has all the addictive features of a genre classic (although they are not always executed successfully).

Bookishly Ever After was a slow-burn, addicting, romcom. It took me a bit to jump in to the story, but then I couldn't put it down. There were times that there were time jumps that weren't well defined, but that is my only critique! Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this free advanced readers copy. All opinion shared in here are my own.

I am greatly appreciated that netgalley approved of me to get this arc. The premise was interesting but , I couldnt get into the story. I wasn't a huge fan of the femal character .

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an advance copy of this book.

Unfortunately for me, after chapter 19 I am having to give up on this book and mark it as a DNF. I can't relate to Lexi at all and the repetitiveness is not something I wish to continue at this moment in time. I may come back to this book at a later date, but for now it's not for me.

The concept is amazing and I was really looking forward to this book, however I think fans of a more 'Austen-esque' (yes I've made up a word) vibe will thoroughly enjoy this chick lit romance.

I do agree though that everyone needs a bit of Hugh Grant and Colin Firth at times, they are my guilty pleasures too!

This book wasn't for me. Usually bookstore settings always do the trick for me!! But unfortunately, the characters and the writing fell a bit flat for me :((

thank you to netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review 🫶

I couldn't do it. The FMC was absolutely insufferable. This book put me in a reading slump and I ended up missing the download window for a book I actually wanted. I can't recommend it at all.

This was very cute!! I really enjoyed reading and will so reread it again soon, I really liked it

The dialogue was witty and cute, the romance, the characters was so cuteeee

This was a cute enemy to lovers about two rival bookshop owners. It was kind of slow at first but picked up about half way through. Lexi is trying to save her bookshop that she inherited from her beloved grandmother and Sam is her biggest competitor.

Very cute and unputdownable! I love for cute romances and this fits the bill so well, Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

I love books about books! This was an enjoyable read with relatable characters and loved the use of Jane Austen references. Funny internal monologue.

Loved the sweet build up of the romance, loved the Austen references, loved the English/DC cultural contrasts. A really fun read, and a completely lovely epilogue.

I really wanted to like this book. It has tons of charm and love and I think there are readers out there that are going to eat it up.

But I couldn’t help but think this needed one more draft. I don’t want to do a whole rundown here but a few points that just stuck with me that were so easy to fix:

- didn’t Sam have a dog? Where did the dog go?
- the first time they meet after Lexi has the concussion, Sam doesn’t even ask her how she is.
- what was the point of the project exactly? It made no logical sense and was out of the window almost immediately.
- he kicked her out of bed twice. I know this was addressed right at the end but honestly Sam just read as an immature man-child unable to have a conversation or recognise when Lexi was just being hashtag adorkable. There were no conversations. Just “I was a project? Get out.” “You’re thinking of going back to London? Get out.” Baffling.
- the third person narrator had Lexi’s voice, to the extent that I got confused in places why it wasn’t in first person.
- the amount of repetition about tipsy drinking made me wonder if the protagonist had a drinking problem.

I honestly think that one more draft could have resulted in a much stronger story with characters who have meaningful and realistic conversations. There was something great in here, but with so much cosy romance on the market I’m not sure where this one stands.

What could be more appealing to readers than a book centred around books? The allure of a romance set in two bookshops with an enemies-to-lovers trope seemed like the perfect holiday read. Bookishly Ever After certainly has tropes in spades it might need a new one – ‘car crash romance’ if only to describe the whiplash the book gives you!

After inheriting her grandmother's bookshop, Lexi Austen leaves the UK and moves to Washington to live her dream of working with the books she loves. Everything goes well until COVID hits, the used bookshop down the road closes, and a shiny new one opens, bringing direct competition for Lexi. Enter Sam Dickens, the fiercely competitive rival bookshop owner, setting the stage for a fight for survival.

Romance novels are often slated for being cheesy but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. You know that a bookshop romance is going to be really cheesy when the main character names are Austin and Dickens so I dove into this book expecting a cheesy, potentially humourous journey. Lexi starts by lamenting the DC dating scene, mentioning she's been on 837 dates in six years—about one every two and a half days. As the reader watches her during her date she can’t even be bothered to remember the person's name. This indifference is a growingly used trope in movies but not something that really works in books. There’s something about the first-person narrative of a book that makes you the character, and the rudeness is jarring. This is the first scene in which you experience Lexi and it does nothing to endear her to readers like myself.

With her dating life uneventful, Lexi decides to woo her competitor purely to distract him and win the "bookshop wars." Despite hating him, she believes she'll be in control, setting the stage for the slow-burn enemies-to-lovers story promised by the blurb. But within three pages, she's completely obsessed.

Every chapter reminds us that Lexi is British (though born in the US, a detail that feels unnecessary), loves tea (despite drinking a lot of coffee), her grandmother left her the bookshop, Sam has green eyes and oh yeah did she mention that she is British?. The constant repetition of her Britishness felt overdone. As a fellow Brit who loves tea, even I found it too much. It genuinely felt like an American trying to write a British person by including every stereotype that they could:

“She grins with all her yellowing British teeth.”

It got to a point where it felt insulting and I was genuinely shocked to find that Mia Page is actually a British author. Reading other reviews it's clear that she also offended her American readers too. If these details added value to the story, it might be okay, but they make up the lead character's entire personality, leading to another problem: the characters are at best flat, at worst dull, and uninteresting. This isn't helped by the constant re-summarising of events, making the book repetitive. What should be full of drama is instead full of self-pity and pettiness.

For all that I disliked about Bookishly Ever After the author did do a few things well. The author lived in DC for a while and the vibe of the neighbourhood and the Capitol Hill area of DC is beautifully described, showing her love for the place. She also perfectly manages to capture the feeling of never fully fitting in anywhere ever again once you have lived in another country for a while, something I know from personal experience and you can tell the author does too.

Overall while there are some parts that I enjoyed this book didn’t have the romantic feel that readers expect when picking up a romance book. There was none of the anguish that usually comes with enemies to lovers and portraying a book set in Washington DC as a ‘small town romance’ just feels out of place. It feels like the author was trying to do a modern take on Pride and Prejudice but sadly fell short of my Great Expectations.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon Books for providing me with this eARC. All opinions are my own.

This was a sweet romance book. Two bookshop owners, Lexi and Sam, find themselves in the midst of a rivalry while having very conflicting feelings about each other. The book is told from Lexi Austen's point of view and she not only talks about the joys and pitfalls of owning a bookshop, but she is surrounded by friends going through various changes, family left back in England, and trying to settle down with the right man. The theme of booklovers being kindred souls is carried through the entire book. Indie bookstores are rapidly declining due to corporate sellers. This book captures the love of indie stores though. Buying books online just does have the sense of community, family, and friendships along with the smell of stacks of books. There is a little bit of steam, not quite fade to black but mostly. It's a slow-burn and Lexi's connections and friends are written very genuinely. Thank you to NetGalley, Avon, and the author for this advanced copy.

If you like chick-lit and books, then this is the book for you! Lexi Austen and Sam Dickens are rival bookshop owners. Lexi inherited the bookshop from her gran and is finding it increasing difficult to keep it running successfully. When Sam begins to sell the type of books that she sells, she decides to take a leaf from her heroine and namesakes books and make Sam fall in love with her so that she can persuade him to sell only the books she wants him too. She finds Sam arrogant, so is certain that her heart is safe from his charms…. but of course, like in all good romances the course of love never runs smoothly. As well as being humorous and witty, I enjoyed finding out more about life for indie booksellers. A perfect holiday read.

If you go into this book expecting a deep indepth saga, you'll likely be disappointed, however if you go in looking for a cosy romance with an easy to follow plot, a simple love story and little nods to literature through the MCs surnames Austen and Dickens, and their places of work - bookshops and want a quick holiday read, this is for you.

It really reminded me of a lot of 90s and early 2000s romcoms.

That's not downplaying it, this book is enjoyable, but might not suit everyone. I feel books like this are great for weekends away or reading in downtime to help you decompress without being too taxing.

I really do look forward to reading more from Mia.

Unfortunately, I have decided to not finish it this book, at least for now, at 51%. I was quite interested in the premise of the book and I was expecting a nice romcom book. However, I feel like that’s not what I got. I did give the book a chance, and I got to 51%, but decided not to continue as I was just skimming through the chapters. I felt that the story wasn’t flowing naturally, there were a lot of time jumps that were difficult to recognise, and I feel like it could have been structured better. During the first thing 12/13 chapters, Lexi keeps talking about how much she hates Sam because of everything that he has done, and how he is enemy number one. However, we don’t really get properly introduced to Sam’s character and some of the things he’s “done” to Lexi and her bookstore until chapter 14, where we get a bit of backstory. I think it would have flowed better to have some backstory at the start to introduce the characters and the setting. I also felt as most of the characters didn’t get properly introduced, they just appeared on the page, like all the booksellers, or Erin’s friends. I also could not relate to Lexi at all, as I felt she came across like a very self-centered person; she wasn’t happy for her friends when they get engaged, and only complains about how lonely she’ll be and how her friends are not paying attention to her because they are busy with their own life - when she mentions multiple times that all she does is work and not spend time with them. She just didn’t seem like a good friend. On top of that, I couldn’t understand the motivation behind her decision to seduce Sam as a way to save the bookstore, it just didn’t make any sense to me that the goal was to make him fall in love and then… what would happen? How would he stop being her competition? I just don’t see the logic. I was sad to be disappointed with this book, as I think the idea and premise is good and could be a good rom com story, but I think maybe it needs to be thought about a bit more and maybe restructured to make sure that the story flows nicely. I think other people might like this book, but unfortunately it wasn’t for me. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange of an honest review.

"Bookishly Ever After" starts off with promise—a tale of Lexi Austen, a bookshop owner dealing with drama in her dating life and competition from Sam Dickens, a rival bookshop owner. Initially drawn to the enemies-to-lovers dynamic, I hoped for a wild ride. However, the story quickly lost its allure as Lexi's tactics to win over Sam felt manipulative rather than charming. Her approach, especially given Sam's recent breakup, left me feeling uncomfortable, like she was playing games with his emotions.

The book's length and repetitive nature became glaring issues. Clocking in at what felt like too many pages, the constant reminders of Lexi's background and inner monologues didn't add depth but rather dragged the plot. Lexi herself came across as annoyingly self-important, making it hard to connect with her journey or root for her romantic endeavors with the bland Sam, who lacked personality and charisma.

Some scenes were downright cringe-worthy, like Lexi's inappropriate comparison of her father's death to Sam's father's life choices, or Sam's awkward greeting that focuses on Lexi's body. These moments detracted from what could have been a light-hearted, bookish romance, instead adding more discomfort to an already uneven storyline.

Despite my disappointment, I recognize that tastes vary. Readers who enjoy light, book-centric romances with a sprinkle of Jane Austen might find enjoyment here. The premise of rival bookshop owners navigating their personal and professional challenges amid economic woes and pandemic impacts has potential, though it ultimately fell short for me due to its forced dialogue and unnatural flow. While it wasn't my cup of tea, those seeking a quick, easy read might still find "Bookishly Ever After" a suitable choice for a cozy afternoon indulgence in literary-themed romance.