A Swedish tourist and a new book shop with a Gay Erotica section. Things are about to change in Broken Wheel…
Broken Wheel – the blurb
Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara: Sara traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal Amy, but when she arrives she finds Amy’s funeral guests just leaving. The residents of Broken Wheel are happy to look after their bewildered visitor–there’s not much else to do in a dying small town that’s almost beyond repair. You certainly wouldn’t open a bookstore. And definitely not with Sara the tourist in charge.
You’d need a vacant storefront (Main Street is full of them), books (Amy’s house is full of them), and…customers. The bookstore might be a little quirky. Then again, so is Sara. But Broken Wheel’s own story might be funnier, more eccentric and surprising than she thought.
She is too fond of books
I’m a booky. I read ALL the time. Everyday. I love books. But even I thought that The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend was perhaps a a little too booky. I know I can hear you gasp at that statement. But take the sentence “Amy can’t be dead….she liked books, for Gods sake” as an example. Books do a lot of thing but prevent death? I don’t think so.
There is a whole host of background characters designed for humour, the lead man is sufficiently hunk-like to be the leading man. There is even a gay bar (well a bar owned by gay men). It cannot be denied that the book is big hearted, warm hearted and all the rest of the hearts. But for something so bookish the books recommended were very mainstream – Sweden has produced many more books than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and out of all the books to recommend a male recovering alcoholic would you really go for Bridget Jones? I get this was perhaps an effort to bridge the gap between any American and Swedish crossover readers but any reader worth their salt always has a few gems tucked away that will have never made the £4 Sainsburys special shelf. There was no evidence of this within Broken Wheel and it’s such a shame. To have come away from it with a whole new reading list would have worked a treat.