THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL by Abbi Waxman

An utter delight to read, helped enormously by the endearing, smart, slightly anxious Nina Hill, employee of an independent bookstore, whose favourite activity is, without a doubt, reading. Oh, that is when she is not agonising over the minutiae of her daily life, ensuring that her daily wall planner is exact in its detail, or when she is engaging with her character-filled cat Phil. But don't get the idea that only child Nina is some sort of bookish, nerdy, introvert who cannot connect with others. Not at all. Nina has a wide group of friends, is a trivia pub quiz queen, and sounds absolutely adorable.

She seems to come across as a slightly unusual person, a little bit quirky and whacky, but I loved her, because I could see parts of myself in her, as I am sure most readers will also. Of course we love characters we can relate to. And for how many people would their dream job be to work in a bookshop, even if you do have to be nice to everyone all the time. Hardly surprising you would need the solitude.

Anyway, the main thing is that Nina is happy, she loves her life, she sees no reason for it to change, for her to do other things with her life, to travel, to have a boyfriend, to have huge adventures. Another reason to love her - she is happy and content with her life. Adorable.

Then one day she receives a letter from a solicitor. It turns out she is not an only child after all. Her absent and unknown father (her mother's choice) had always known about her. Nina is required to be at the will reading following his recent death. Who wouldn't be thrown into a tail spin by this alarming and completely unexpected piece of news? So now Nina finds she is having some chaos in her life - her new and surprising family, the contents of the will,  and to top it off the difficult-to-avoid attentions of a rival trivia expert. How is Nina going to cope and manage with all this conflict and unresolved issues going on. Will she find a wall planner clever enough to cope with all these new people, new events, new decisions? For once, Nina is being challenged - how will she deal with this?

The author is a fabulous writer - funny, witty, combines words in a most charming and hilarious way, adores her character creation, all together just too cute for words.