Title : An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street
Author : Jaimie Admans
Genre : Romance ; Rom-Com ; Chicklit
Pages : 322
Release Date : 11 January 2023
I received this Advance Review Copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this amazing opportunity!!
A LITTLE BACKSTORY TO THIS SERIES
An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street is the second book in the Ever After Street Series by The Nerdy Bookarazzi’s favourite author Jaimie Admans. Just to give you an insight on the Ever After Street Series, in this series Jaimie, plans on exploring all our favourite childhood fairytales with a modern outlook. This series takes place in a fictional place called the Ever After Street where a small community has multiple shops with Fairytale themes ranging from Aladdin, Sleeping beauty and what not?
The first book in the series is A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street, in this book the author explored Cinderella’s story which all of us from The Nerdy Bookarazzi absolutely loved and now in An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street, sure you all would have guessed it! It’s The Beauty and The Beast’s retelling. Yayy!!
It is a public knowledge that a lot of people have a conflicted relationship with The Beauty and The Beast story or all the Disney Fairytales for that matter, majorly because of the way in which all these females characters are built. But you will not have to worry about it in this series because Jaimie has got us all covered in that aspect.
First of all, let me tell you why I was excited about this book when Jaimie told me what the next book on this series is going to be. Well, it is based on The Beauty and The Beast so obviously there is going to be a lot of books and she said the lead character is going to be a Bookshop owner. Right after hearing this I was convinced this book is going to be mind-blowing and I would definitely love it. I was waiting for the launch eagerly for months and jumped at the first opportunity to read this book.
STORYLINE
An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street is the story of a bookseller Marnie Platt. She owns a bookshop along with her mother who has recently passed away due to illness. Marnie while grappling with the loss of her mother, has to also save her crumbling bookstore from going out of business. To add on to her plight, she receives an eviction notice from her landlord as her negligence in maintaining the garden area which has attracted a lot of complaints. While struggling to come to terms with her mother’s death and boosting the daily sales of her bookshop, will Marnie be able to save her beloved bookshop and revive the garden to its original beauty as it was?
Marnie buckles under the pressure and realises the enormity of her world currently being out of her control. Surprisingly she finds help from her so called “Scary Neighbour” who has always been aloof from Ever After Street and its neighbourhood activities. However, he only offers help over a ledge as tall as the walls he has built around himself. The conversations Marnie has with her Scary Neighbour become her pillar of support during this time and she leans on him without ever having seen him. Will she be able to break through the hard exterior that he has created to protect himself (or others) from the beast inside?
THE NERDY BOOKARAZZI’S TAKE ON THE BOOK
The book being based on a renowned fairytale held no surprise ending but still managed to keep us engaged with its interesting take on the world of a small bookshop owner, and the path of healing the main characters were going through. This book highlights challenges and realities that a small bookshop owner might face during this era, where they have to compete with E-commerce giants who offer books for much cheaper rates and have a monopoly over the industry. The only way these little bookshop owners can stand apart is by providing amazing real-life bookish experiences to the readers which every reader craves for in this digital world. This book allows us to understand the foundation of what connects booklovers and it also encourages the bookshop owners use their stores as a safe haven where booklovers can form a community or space to connect over the universes created by their favourite authors.
The most notable aspect of this book is how the lead characters evolved and faced their emotional baggage and finally moved out of it. This is one of the major themes of the book which will have a lasting impression on the reader’s minds. Personally, one instance that shook the basement of all our belief system was the moment where Marnie gets to know her scary neighbour better and the ordeal he had faced in life, she wants to console him, saying it will be better, you should move on and all the other regular stuff we tell our friends and family when we are trying to console but she will consciously restrain herself from doing it. She believes all these consolations will only belittle the bad experiences and pain they’ve gone through in the past and that’s completely unfair. That line changed everything, it was like waking up from a trance and facing the reality for what it is. Jaimie subtly add these kind of strong psychological aspects to her books effortlessly which resounds like a thunderbolt.
When it comes to books, bookstore, bookish ideas infiltrated into books there’s nobody who can do it better than Jaimie Admans. If you are a bookshop owner, you should read this book and The little bookshop of love stories, the ideas in these books will help you boost the business and the readers crave that their favourite bookshop would come up with something like this. All the bookish references will make the readers run crazy with nostalgia.
The characterisation and the development of the Scary Neighbour next door was phenomenal. Both Marnie and Scary Neighbours character was on point, the author knows all her characters inside out that at no point any of them reacted or behaved out of character. This was absolutely remarkable because we come across various books where there will be no consistency in the character which would make the reading journey ponderous. This happens majorly because the authors themselves don’t know their characters well or they take an extremely long time to write the book and as a results sometimes the authors tent to forget their characters if it is not meticulously planned beforehand.
In the world of external beauties and amount emphasise is given on how someone looks, walks and carries themselves, through this book the author had enhanced us to see what the most vital things of all – the heart, character, intent and manners, which will make an individual look beautiful.
Generally Jaimie’s books focuses a lot on the sense of community, how people help each other no matter what. This book is no different, every shopkeeper in the ever-after-street is a sweet heart with the heart of gold. After reading her books you will want to see the good in everyone. It is a the kind of positivity everyone needs in life and Jaimie‘s books never fails to feed the readers will happiness and positivity.
It is definitely a good read if you are looking to heal your heart and fill your life with happiness then we would strongly suggest you go on this ride to Ever After Street with Marnie, we are pretty sure you will not be disappointed.
Our rating for this book would be 4 out of 5 stars
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Happy Reading folks!
Meenu & Suchi
