Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to William Morrow and Harper Audio for gifting me review copies of The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams.

This book made me feel all the feels. All of them.

The Reading List follows the lives and stories of multiple characters who intersect at a local library (whether past or present) and have a reading list of classics in common. Each book on the list teaches them something different, depending on who they are and where they are in their lives.

The list:

• To Kill a Mockingbird

• Rebecca

• The Kite Runner

• Life of Pi

• Pride and Prejudice

• Little Women

• Beloved

• A Suitable Boy

This book really highlights the importance of libraries in a community and the ability of books to both help bring us together and transport us to new places entirely. It deals with difficult family situations, mental health, grief, lost dreams, loneliness, aging…but in such a beautiful way. Although I should warn you that sobbed like a baby through part of the story.

It’s such a beautiful, heartbreaking, moving book and I’m jealous of anyone who gets to read this one for the first time.

I started by reading the physical book but switched to the audiobook halfway through. The audio is so beautifully performed by Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, and Paul Panting. It comes in at 12 hours and 47 minutes.

You can grab a copy of the audiobook via the button below, or get a physical copy here.

Synopsis:

An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.