When I started this novel about a curmudgeonly bookstore owner I wasn't sure I would like it but ended up loving it. A.J. Fikry, a widower, is the owner of a small bookstore on a Massachusetts island with a small year-round population and a influx of "summer people" in the warmer months. Fikry is very particular about what he sells and is, to put it mildly, a book snob. Needless to say, business is bad. When his precious rare copy of Poe's Tamerlane is stolen his life takes on a new sense of doom. But then the unexpected happens in the form of a small child left at the store with a note asking him to raise her there. The impossible becomes the improbable and Fikry ends up fostering, then adopting the girl. The whole town notices the change in him as he becomes more social and makes changes to his store. He even finds romance. I don't know what it is about this book that captured me so. Maybe it was the frequent references to different books that, for the most part, were ones I have read. Or it could have been some other indescribable quality. At any rate, I enjoyed it.
