The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson Review

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

The premise is exciting, suppose you start having dreams that are of a completely conceivable alternate life. They progress in time just like waking life. This is what happens to Kitty Miller in 1962. A single thirty-eight year old woman who owns a bookstore with her best friend Frieda. In the dreams she starts having she goes by her given name of Katharyn and is married to a man she loves and has triplets with.

The book was a fun read and made me think a bit about what life then would have been like living as a single woman. And about how one little change or missed connection can so intensely affect a life.

I enjoyed both Kitty/Katharyn and Frieda’s characters, and their relationship differences in the waking and dreaming lines. The only character I found to be a bit of a cardboard character was Lars Katharyn’s husband. There was something that was a stressor for them but it didn’t flesh Lars out for me.

I really enjoyed the time I spent with this book. I wondered all through the book how the ending was going to go. How Swanson was going to end this story. It was one of those great endings that you realize at the end, it was the only way it could end.  It's worth a read.

Amazon Description:

A provocative and hauntingly powerful debut novel reminiscent of Sliding Doors, The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her dreams.

Nothing is as permanent as it appears . . .

Denver, 1962: Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn’t quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.

Then the dreams begin.

Denver, 1963: Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life. They have beautiful children, an elegant home, and good friends. It’s everything Kitty Miller once believed she wanted—but it only exists when she sleeps.

Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes. Can she choose which life she wants? If so, what is the cost of staying Kitty, or becoming Katharyn?

As the lines between her worlds begin to blur, Kitty must figure out what is real and what is imagined. And how do we know where that boundary lies in our own lives?