Thank you, Netgalley for this wonderful read.

Readers of the Broken Wheel Recommend follows a young woman named Sara that travels from Sweden with books and dreams to meet her pen-pal Amy, who lives in a small town in Iowa called Broken Wheel. Upon arriving to USA, she quickly discovers that Amy has passed away and that the town has been long expecting her arrival. While it is lonely and awkward at first for Sara, she is quickly drawn into this down-and-out little town and all of its quirky, stubborn residents, most especially Amy’s nephew Tom, to the point that returning to Sweden does not sound so appealing. The chain of events to follow are quirky, fun, and at times bittesweet.

This novel is centered around Sara’s love of books that she tries to impart on everyone in this not-so-literay town in middle America. There are references to books of all genres scattered about, which does my book-loving heart very well. Her personal philosophy that she can find a book for every kind of person also matches my own thoughts.

Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend definitely asks its readers to suspend their disbelief quite a bit. My issue wasn’t with the idea of coming to America to meet a pen pal (again, this is something that I would do) but with the town set up, and a lot of its residents. However, I enjoyed the story wbough that my suspension wasn’t all that hard to do. The characters were at times hard to connect to, since Sara is a very quiet soul and she is our focal point, but I think in the end, you learn to love her despite it.

Some of my favorite parts were the letters interspersed in the novel, written from Amy to Sara before Sara came to the states. It gives the novel some of the richness it occasionally lacks, and makes you really wish you had met Amy.

I would recommend this book to most book lovers I know, but probably not to the staunch romantics. While a love story, it is a soft, inevitable kind, not one full of passion and fire. This book deserves four out of five waves!