finished reading

This is a love letter to book lovers. I liked the references to books. I liked the small-town America setting (it could have been anywhere, not just the mid-west). I liked the secondary characters. I liked the concept. I liked how letters introduced each chapter.

I didn't like the translation, however, I suspect that some of the richness of the story was lost to the relatively simplistic wording of the translation.

From the publisher:

Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist—even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory.

All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town.