Twelve stories. Twelve months. Once chance to heal her heart…

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. Mainly because Joe died five months ago…

The gift is simple – twelve carefully-chosen books from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him.

Tilly sets out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to vlog her journey, her story becomes more than her own. With help from Alfie, the bookshop owner, her budding new following and her friends and family, can Tilly’s year of books show her how to love again?

How much did I love this book? I knew literally nothing about it when I saw it on Book of the Month a few months ago. I read the synopsis and, on a whim, decided to give it a go, and I am so glad I did.

This one has a real Emily Stone vibe, and you already know how much I adore her books. If you’ve ever found yourself slipping into one of those and not coming up for air, you’re going to want to clear an afternoon for this one too.

Tilly Nightingale gets a call from her local bookshop because there’s a birthday present being held for her, which is strange in two ways. First, Tilly hasn’t picked up a book for fun in a long time. Second, the gift is from her husband Joe, and Joe has been dead for five months.

When she finally goes in to collect it, she finds out that before he died, Joe picked out a dozen books for her. One for every month of the year he wouldn’t be there to help her through her grief, each one chosen specifically to help her keep going. Tilly starts reading her way through them, and the list turns into a quiet adventure that takes her further from home than she thought she was going to go. Along the way she starts filming herself reading and posting it online, picks up a small but loyal audience, and gets closer to Alfie, the man who runs the bookshop.

Tilly is so easy to root for. She’s grieving and tired and not sure who she’s supposed to be without Joe, and watching her slowly start to come back to herself was one of my favorite parts of the book. Joe himself, even though he’s already gone before the story begins, is such a strong presence on the page. The way he shows up through these books, through what he chose for her and why, made me fall for him too. By the end I felt like I knew him almost as well as Tilly did.

And then we have poor, sweet, lonely Alfie. The bookshop owner. The man with a quiet life and a quiet heart, who keeps showing up for Tilly without making a big deal of it. I won’t go too deep on what happens between them, and I probably don’t need to because you probably have an idea of where this story goes. That’s fine. The journey is so warm and well-written that the destination being predictable doesn’t take anything away from it. Sometimes you want the comfort of a sweet love story that’s going to land exactly where it should, and this one does that beautifully.

One of my favorite touches is the suggested reading list that runs through the book, and the curation itself is a love letter to readers. It also kept giving me more books to add to my list, which is dangerous, because I do not need more books on my list. But here we are.

This is a book for book lovers. And it’s a book for anyone who wants to sink into a story about grief and love and the small ways we get pulled back into the world by the things that bring us joy. It earns its happily ever after, and it left me with a tear in my eye and a soft, settled kind of feeling in my chest.

If you’ve been wanting something a little sweet and tender, or if you’re a fan of the Emily Stone, pick this one up. I’m so glad Book of the Month dropped it in front of me. I would have hated to miss this one.

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