This is a sly, sly book. You can imagine it making puppy eyes to every booklover who happens to pick up, showing off its bookseller-protagonist and its various literary quotes, all but screaming : "I was written for you,you cannot but love me!" 
 Gabrielle Zevin has a very precise (and correct!) idea of what appeals to us, nerdy, easily manipulated book-nerds and she applies it in this novel with no shame, pressing all the right buttons at the right moment. 
 This is a fairy tale for booklovers, where every thing clicks perfectly into place at the right time while a cozy bookish atmosphere accompany you through the reading. 
 At page one you meet the chirpy sell rep for an important publisher, at page four the grumpy widowed bookseller. At page five you know how this will end. In the middle there will be some misunderstanding, a precocious opportune little orphan, a good cop as godfather, a bittered sister in law as godmother and a rare book that get lost. 
 There is nothing particularly original, no dramatic twist that can't be foreseen some chapter in advance, every funny, dorky, sentimental moment will be played in front of you by your book-expert imagination and yet... yet somehow Zevin pulls this off. Somehow you actually enjoy the reading even if the skeleton of the plot is self-evident and you know that the author is manipulating you. 
 There are so many cheesy moments and so many happy coincidences in this book that I kept thinking:"You've got to be kiddin' me!" but in the end the light tone makes you forget all the weak points, investing you in the fate of the characters till the end. 
 All in all a pleasant read, if you don't take it too seriously and let your bookish ego being stroked.