Battle of the Bookstores

Ryan Lawson does not bother correcting Josie when she mistakenly believes his name is Brian, though he is surprised she doesn’t know who he is. He’s been aware of her for years; he knows her name, her coffee order, and that she even orders a cookie on bad days. He finds her attractive but intimidating, so he’s never had the courage to approach her. Ryan has several brothers who were always initiating competitions when they were children, but Ryan has never liked competing. However, he realizes that if he wants to keep the job he’s passionate about, he needs to beat Josie.

Ryan returns to Happy Endings, where he greets his assistant manager, Cinderella—a name she adopted after her divorce seven years ago. He accidentally calls her Cindy because he’s still not used to her unconventional name change. After an eventful shift of helping readers find their next reads, Ryan closes shop and heads home. As he passes Josie’s shop, his gaze lingers on her. Josie is inside reading, and Ryan notices that she looks lonely. Back at his apartment, Ryan opens BookFriends to message his anonymous friend, BookshopGirl. Though they have completely different reading tastes, he enjoys reading her “thoughtful and inquisitive” reviews (19). They chat about her current read, and Ryan asks her for a recommendation. Before she can name a book, their conversation is abruptly interrupted by a call from BookshopGirl’s sister. She returns the following morning to chat with him about how therapeutic books are. She claims they are more dependable than people and provide unwavering support and acceptance. Ryan agrees with her sentiments wholeheartedly.

Before her bookstore opens the next morning, Josie remembers her childhood spent with her nose in books to drown out the arguments her mother would have with various boyfriends. Josie used books as an escape from the stressors of her childhood. Though her social circle has always been small, managing a bookstore has “forced [her] out of [her] shell, helping [her] grow from a shy bookworm into someone who can confidently navigate conversations and recommendations” (26). She has to win this competition to keep her managerial position, if only for the personal growth and fulfillment the role has given her.

Before Josie leaves for work, she receives a visit from her younger sister, Georgia, who wears a brace on her right leg and uses a cane to walk because of an accident that occurred while Josie was in college. Georgia brings a rugelach: When the sisters were children, their neighbor, Mrs. Goldstein, would bring over a rugelach whenever their mom was struggling through a breakup and neglected to take care of them. Ever since, the two have kept up a tradition of eating rugelach after a bad day. Georgia, a graduate student in psychology at Tufts University, uses the opportunity to pry into Josie’s mind, making Josie feel uncomfortably analyzed. Georgia echoes Josie’s concerns that summer is a period of slow business for literary and nonfiction, as most readers tend to gravitate toward lighthearted and romantic reads—implying that Happy Endings will have an advantage throughout the competition.

The siblings are interrupted by a man knocking on the front door of the bookstore. Though the store has not yet opened for the day, Josie allows him inside rather than turn potential customers away. He tries to return a book without a receipt, but since this will hurt the store’s profits, Josie refuses. The man angrily storms out with insulting and misogynistic words to her. Josie tries to brush off his insults, but the interaction triggers old insecurities.

Josie visits Beans and speaks with the manager, Eddie, who seems to believe that she will lose her competition with Happy Endings. With her confidence even lower than before, she encounters Ryan, who also thinks he will win. While Ryan offers to hire her as his assistant manager when he wins, Josie declares that she will fire him when she wins. The only good thing to come of the interaction is that Ryan finally corrects Josie about his name.

Ryan is bewildered at how his conversation with Josie took such a hostile turn. Eddie, who has overheard their conversation from behind the coffee bar, tells Ryan to take it easy on Josie. He vaguely mentions that she’s been through a lot to get to where she is. After the work day, Ryan calls a meeting with his employees—the middle-aged divorcée Cinderella, elderly Nora, high schooler Eliza, and college student Indira—to discuss the competition. Before every meeting, they pull a prompt from the fishbowl—a tradition started by the previous owner, Elaine, who has since passed away but once insisted that sharing literary preferences “can reveal a person’s own story, the scars they’re trying to heal” (41). The drawn prompt asks them to share their anti-kinks—things that turn them off in romances. The employees list poor portrayal of elderly sex drives (Nora), the tendency for YA to “dumb down” sexual or romantic content (Eliza), arranged marriage (Indira), romanticizing cheating (Cinderella), and the tall-man fetish as well as enemies-to-lovers (Ryan). Ryan’s answer is controversial amongst the ladies, but he explains that the enemies-to-lovers trope normalizes toxic behavior and isn’t plausible.

Upon hearing about the competition, the workers are concerned for the fate of the store and the security of their jobs if Josie wins. They decide to brainstorm ideas to keep revenue coming in. Amongst the ideas are hosting more events, creating bookish crochet designs to sell, blind dates with books, and themed sex-educational nights with featured books and panels with sex experts.

An excerpt of BookFriends messages shows BookshopGirl and RJ Reads having a lighthearted conversation in which they describe their favorite childhood books as badly as possible. RJ Reads describes Winnie the Pooh as a bear with a binge-eating disorder, and BookshopGirl describes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a book about a factory powered by forced indigenous labor.

Josie spends two weeks preparing a “Pages and Pairings” event night where she pairs three new releases with a wine she believes captures the essence of the book. Though this is out of her comfort zone, she believes it’s necessary to bring her store more profits. The night seems to be going extremely well when a black cat suddenly causes commotion, knocking over and breaking wine glasses and shocking attendees. Josie accuses Ryan of attempting to sabotage her event when he emerges to collect his cat, Hades, but Ryan insists he won’t need to cheat to win.

Josie returns to her event, but after the cat incident, half the attendees left, and only a handful bought books. When Georgia texts asking how the event went, Josie decides not to bother her with the depressing details. Though Georgia grew up a happy kid, Josie feels that she’s been too serious since the accident and deserves to have more fun. The reminder of Georgia’s accident conjures up memories of Josie receiving the call about it while she was in her dorm room at Emerson. Josie answered her mom’s phone call to learn that Georgia had been hit by a car and was in critical condition. Their mom took off with a guy shortly after, and Josie had to drop out of college to be there for her sister’s recovery.

To distract herself from the painful memories, Josie loads BookFriends on her computer and messages RJ Reads. They discuss a book they’ve both read and enjoyed. While Josie believes the slow beginning was crucial to the novel’s set-up, RJ argues it could have been streamlined. The good-natured argument gives Josie a much-needed reprieve from the tension of the day.

Ryan readies the store to host a “Knitting and Knotting” event in which customers will bring knitting projects to work on while they discuss the Omegaverse, “a subgenre of speculative romance with a caste system of characters, usually featuring werewolves” (57). Meanwhile, he receives a text from his friend Gretchen—a fellow romance bookseller looking to open a store of her own on the Cape. She offers to be his backup plan if he loses the competition and needs a job.

A mother and her teen daughter show up, causing Ryan momentary panic because the event is geared toward mature audiences. However, when they alleviate his concerns by implying they are aware of what the event entails, Ryan is reminded of his mentor, Elaine, who taught him not to make assumptions about readers. The memory also causes him to think back on how he met Elaine. His friends dared him to steal a book from her store, but he was caught and knocked over glass figurines while trying to escape. She tasked him with working off the cost of the figurines for three months at the store, where he would read romance books aloud to her parrot, Esmerelda. Through this task he developed a love for bookselling, and he continued to work at the bookstore through high school, college, and afterward. The job also led to his discovery and diagnosis of dyslexia.

When more people show up to the Knitting and Knotting event than they anticipate, Ryan goes next door to Beans to ask Eddie for some chairs to borrow. Josie is in the coffee shop and annoyed at how popular Ryan’s event is compared to hers.