One day, Yeongju decides she's had enough. She picks up her life, her high-stress job, divorces her husband, and opens up a bookshop. She opens the bookstore with the intention of bringing to life her childhood dream: to read more. But Yeongju is haunted by her past, stuck in the past, unable to move on. With a host of characters—Minjun, the barista she hires for the bookshop's cafe; a young, Mincheol, a teenager who's questioning life and studying, and his frazzled mother; Seungwoo, a software developer-turned book blogger; Jimi, the bookstore's coffee vendor who's unhappily married; Jungsuh, who's always crocheting and knitting—alongside the magical power of books, maybe Yeongju will finally be able to come back to herself: to be truly happy. This is the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop.
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop is a 2022 novel by Hwang Bo-Reum and translated by Shanna Tan. I came across this book after someone recommended it to me when I was talking to them about What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama. There was a fairly lengthy wait list at the library, one I no doubt contributed to by returning this book late but, hey, I got there in the end! I went into this novel expecting What you are looking for is in the library, but now, after finishing it, I've come across the Goodreads page, which blurbs The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which I decidedly did not like as much. I went into this book excited, and while I did like some elements, I toed more towards my feelings relating to The Midnight Library. That is, it's a perfectly fine book with some characters I grew to adore, but overall, I think I'm a little done with this magical realism bookstore/library pseudo-philosophical genre of fiction.
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