Format: 304 pages, Paperback
Published: July 7, 2024 by HQ Fiction GB
Fiction/borrowed
This felt heavier than I had expected.
Small southern town which seems to be filled with neonazis, racists, biggots, well you name it. And then Lula Dean gets the notion that books makes you gay, trans, everything that that is not Christian and right. So she bans most books from the library and opens her own little booklibrary thing on her front lawn.
The book is told in in many povs that gets their own chapter. Bad ones that think this is right, good ones that want to fight it, and then the middle people who I found interesting. The ones who went to see what crappy books she had and found other books inside. And those books changed their lives. They learned about rape, racism, antisemitism and wanted to change something in their lives.
An interesting book, and there is hope. Also for I really liked the epilogue for once. That one was cool
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.
But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome” dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.
That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.
