The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks - Shauna Robinson - ★★.¾

AUTHOR: Shauna Robinson

GENRE: Contemporary Romance-Drama.

PUBLICATION DATE: November 1, 2022

RATING: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary romance-drama, though the romance is secondary to the drama. Book about books. Annoying main character. Straightforward plot with some loopholes and some convenient developments. Plenty of humour and heart, but also plenty of judgement and aggravation. A decent pastime option when you want a light read that doesn’t tax your brain.

Plot Preview:

When twenty-eight-year-old Maggie, frustrated at not having a successful career path, gets a call from her best friend asking for help taking care of her bookstore for a few months while she goes on maternity leave, Maggie accepts, even though she isn't fond of reading. It’s not just this lack of interest in books that makes Maggie’s task difficult. The bookstore is one of the central attractions in a town with a strong literary history, and as such, its governing body, the Bell Society, doesn’t allow it to sell any book that was published after the death of the famous local author, which was decades ago! When the bookstore stumbles towards failure, partly because it cannot sell anything written in this century and partly thanks to Maggie’s lack of adeptness at running it, she decides to break the rules. After all, what use are rules if they don’t work?

The story comes to us in Maggie’s first-person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

📚 Funny to see a lead who hates books but works in a bookstore. Gotta be a first in this genre! I didn’t like how this was executed, but points for thinking of this contradictory character detailing.

📚 The indie bookstore setting and its secret literary meetings. I loved the discussions in those meetings and those funny retellings!

📚 A good ending that will satisfy fans of the genre.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

📖 Straightforward, cookie-cutter secondary characters, most of whom are likeable but with not much depth. Maggie’s curmudgeonly neighbour Vernon is possibly the best-sketched character overall, followed closely by Maggie’s love interest Malcolm. The antagonist Ralph has potential but his turnaround is a bit too sudden. Most of the rest of the characters have limited roles and hence, limited character detailing.

📖 For a contemporary romance-drama, romance doesn’t dominate the plot, which is a huge yay in my books. However, there is barely any connection between Maggie and Malcolm. The relationship seems written just because there needs to be a relationship; there is never any chemistry between them.

📖 Given the title, I thought this would be a novel about banned books. It does have banned books, but not the kind we usually hear of. The ‘banned’ only refers to the books Maggie isn't allowed to sell at the bookstore because of the Bell Society’s policy. This was slightly disappointing, but not so much as to kill my interest.

📖 I love how the book highlights Black literature and provides several examples of Black works that ought to be considered classics. However, should this come by dismissing ALL white literature? There are many amazing classic books written by white authors as well, so can't we just celebrate all good classics regardless of their writers’ skin colour or race?

Bookish Nays:

📕 Maggie as a person… Sigh… Her moral compass doesn’t match mine at all. She lies, she keeps secrets even when not needed, she has no qualms taking risky business decisions for a store she doesn’t even own, without once considering what the repercussions might be for her pregnant best friend whose only source of income is the store. She even manipulates Malcolm into doing many challenging things without once stepping out of her comfort zone in a positive way. All of this would still have been okay had she shown some growth over the course of the book OR had she faced the brunt of her wrongdoings. But as you might guess, Maggie gets away with everything with not even a hard word from anyone. It is next to impossible to accept such a character as the lead of an uplifting book.

📕 Maggie as the bookstore owner…. Longer, deeper, sigh… She suddenly becomes the girl with the golden touch once she comes to the bookstore, even though nothing in her life prior to that point has gone as planned. Maggie doesn’t even like books nor does she know anything about running a bookstore. Yet, there is never a hitch in her new plans, all the more odd as she doesn’t even consult her best friend for bookish decisions. Immediate response from high-profile authors, book sales from a new website, making a friend of the neighbourhood grump, instant information about a town secret – anything she touches results in immediate success. Whether she wants a website designer or an accountant, she finds one most conveniently. Even feel-good genres need to incorporate some realistic life challenges!

📕 All the dissing remarks against classics – so annoying! It’s not like I am a huge fan of some classics mentioned in the book. (I dozed my way through Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby.) But the way the books are ridiculed wasn’t to my liking. Every book has its place and those who believe that only contemporary books are worth reading are no better than those who believe that only nonfiction is true reading or that only the classics contain great writing. I hate that a book about books went so aggressive against the reading of classics. To be fair, all these thoughts come from doofus Maggie. (Her absurd remark against P&P might have fuelled my ire further.) I would have let this go if the same thought had not been repeated consistently throughout the story and had Maggie realised that some classics do have good content, even if they weren’t her cup of tea. Without that lesson, it is confusing to understand whether the thoughts are Maggie’s or the author’s.

All in all, Maggie was a tough character to like and most of my dissatisfaction with this book lies with the way she was sketched. But if you can keep aside her irksome personality, the book does deliver as per genre, with many heartwarming and humorous scenes, some lovely secondary characters, and a happy ending. I might have liked this more a decade or more ago, but I am not so patient anymore.

Recommended to fans of the romance-drama genre and of books about books, especially those looking for the relatively rare Black rep in a bookstore story. As long as you can tolerate Maggie, you might like this novel more than I did.

My thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for providing the DRC of “The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.