What would you do if you discovered your grumpy neighbor who hates everyone had a love affair 60 years ago that he never got over?
I randomly stumbled across this book by Lucy Gilmore online and I’m so glad I did because it was a delightful read!
It starts with Chloe Sampson, the frazzled sort-of librarian trying desperately to hold things together after her mom abandoned her and her three younger siblings.
Chloe was in college, so she currently doesn’t even have a degree, much less the graduate degree in library sciences to be a “real” librarian. But the guy who runs the library of her small hometown in Washington lets her do menial work around the library. It doesn’t pay much, so she’s stretching every dollar as far as it will go to take care of herself, her three siblings, and their very lazy dog.
One of Chloe’s jobs involves getting rid of old books that are no longer in circulation. One of the books she finds happens to be a rare first edition from the 1960s. She realizes it could actually be worth some money, and she starts to look into selling it when her crotchety neighbor who terrorizes her and her siblings sees the book and offers to buy it for $5K, which is way more than it’s worth. He ends up taking it and giving Chloe a blank check in exchange.
Before he took it, Chloe had discovered notes between two people in the margins of the book. It might lower the resale value of the book, but it piques her interest.
It turns out her crabby neighbor had a love affair 60 years ago. His flame also worked at the same library Chloe works at now and they started communicating by writing in the margins of books they passed back and forth to each other.
Chloe sets out on a mission to find the rest of the books and find out how this love story ended with the man living as a hermit.
The book goes back and forth in time between modern-day Chloe and her grumpy neighbor to the 1960s when her grumpy neighbor was a young man, also trying to make ends meet and support his family after his father’s sudden death, when he got swept off his feet by the beautiful young Army brat with an affinity for horror novels.
After years of being terrorized by their neighbor, the books and a sequence of events give Chloe and her siblings a chance to get to know him better.
This book is bittersweet and sad and romantic and heartfelt and absolutely adorable. I loved every minute I spent reading it and I was sad when it was over because I wanted to spend more time with these characters.