From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Katarina Bivald,

Alice Menzies (Translator)

Start date: February 4, 2016

Finish date: February 7, 2016

Discussion: 2016 Challenge prompts

Why we're reading this: Translated from Swedish
[close] Translated from Swedish

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Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 41 topics — 2,931 comments total

2016 Challenge prompts

A book with a protagonist who has your occupation...
By Danah · 8 posts · 184 views

last updated Jan 27, 2017 08:22AM

The first book you see in a bookstore
By Juanita · 64 posts · 492 views

last updated Dec 29, 2016 04:24PM

showing 10 of 30 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Mar 31, 2017 Melissa rated it it was amazing

http://www.chicklitcentral.com/2017/0... ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2018 Lisa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen...

Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal. When she arrives, however, she finds Amy's funeral guests just leaving. The residents of Broken Wheel are happy to look after their bewildered visitor - not much else to do in a small town that's almost beyond repair. They just never imagined that she'd start a bookstore. Or that books could bri ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2020 Jaime rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, popsugar-2020, read-2020

This book is what I would put in the category of "gentle reads". Nothing particularly bad happens here, unless you count the death of Amy, Sara's penpal. But that death happens off screen and before Sara arrives, so you have no emotional connection to her at the beginning of the story. So what you really have is the story of a small town and its inhabitants, and how they react to a stranger in their midst.

Broken Wheel, Iowa turns out to be a town desperate for something new to happen, so Sara's ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 23, 2016 Shasta rated it really liked it

A gentle, comforting read aimed squarely at book lovers and anyone who dreams of fabled small-town life with its "everybody knows your name" warmth and sense of community. Realism is not the goal here, but neither is saccharine idealism. The cast of characters were reminiscent of a bizarro world Norman Rockwell painting where the folks are a little sad, a little worse for wear, and struggling to find purpose against a backdrop of abandoned buildings, unemployment, and a vanishing agricultural li ...more

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Mar 03, 2017 Julianne Dunn rated it it was amazing

I want to live in books like this. A community coming together around a bookstore, whether they like it or not - idyllic. I have been trying for years to find a book like "Potato Pie and Guernsey Literary Society". I have been routinely disappointed by books with reviews like, "if you liked PP&GLS, you'll love this book". But this book lives up to that recommendation. A Swedish woman comes to a small Iowa town to meet her elderly pen pal to discover that she has died. Instead of leaving, Sara st ...more

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