The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore – a Review

Amazon / B&N / Kobo / Google Play / Apple / BAM / Book Depository

Description:
Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She never thinks of herself as lonely…but still she looks forward to that time every day when old curmudgeon Arthur McLachlan comes to browse the shelves and cheerfully insult her. Their sparring is such a highlight of Sloane’s day that when Arthur doesn’t show up one morning, she’s instantly concerned. And then another day passes, and another.

Anxious, Sloane tracks the old man down only to discover him all but bedridden…and desperately struggling to hide how happy he is to see her. Wanting to bring more cheer into Arthur’s gloomy life, Sloane creates an impromptu book club. Slowly, the lonely misfits of their sleepy town begin to find each other, and in their book club, find the joy of unlikely friendship. Because as it turns out, everyone has a special book in their heart—and a reason to get lost (and eventually found) within the pages.

Review:

The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore is a wonderful and emotional standalone novel. The storyline revolves around 5 main characters, who will eventually form a book club.  We meet Sloane Parker, our heroine, who loves her job as a librarian, and is engaged to a chiropractor doctor.  Sloane always is outgoing when meeting people in the library, and then she meets Arthur McLachlan, who is mean grumpy old man, constantly hurling insults to anyone who looks his way.  In a short time, Arthur makes sure to come to the library when he knows Sloane is there, happily insulting her, but Sloane enjoys giving it back to Arthur.

One day, when Arthur doesn’t show up, Sloane becomes concerned when a few days pass with no Arthur. She decides to track him down, and learns he was bedridden, having checked himself out of the hospital. Though he was grumpy, Arthur was happy to see Sloane.  When she loses her job, because of her visitation, Sloane makes it her business to visit Arthur every day, including at times staying over his house to help him.

Sloane meets Maisey, a clairvoyant and Arthur’s next-door neighbor. The two of them become friends, and together they make it their business to watch over Arthur.  When Maisey notices a man parked by Arthur’s house for a few days, she confronts him, and learns that he is Arthur’s grandson, Greg.  Of course, the grumpy Arthur treats his grandson as bad as the others.  Soon Mateo ( Sloan’s coworker from the library, who is also a trained nurse) will join them, as he becomes part of the newly set up book club. 

What follows is we learn more about each of the group, their lives, their secrets, their personality, and even Arthur slowly opens up. Especially when Nigel, a former enemy of Arthur, joins the book club. The characters were great, with so much fun humorous banter between them; you couldn’t help but care about each of them.  All 5 were an unlikely group of friends, who were always there to support each other, with each having their own favorite books.

The Lonely Hearts Book Club was so very well written by Lucy Gilmore.  This was a joyous story of friendship, that was heartwarming, emotional, fun, humorous, with each person dealing with love as well as their own grievances.  The Lonely Hearts Book Club was a fantastic read.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher