How to Buy a Love of Reading 
Tanya Egan Gibson
Publisher:  Dutton Adult
Release Date: May 14, 2009
Pages: 400

Rating: 4.5 stars

To Carley Wells, words are the enemy. Her tutor’s innumerable SAT flashcards. Her personal trainer’s “fifty-seven pounds overweight” assessment. And the endless reading assignments from her English teacher, Mr. Nagel. When Nagel reports to her parents that she has answered “What is your favorite book” with “Never met one I liked,” they decide to fix what he calls her “intellectual impoverishment.” They will commission a book to be written just for her-one she’ll have to love-that will impress her teacher and the whole town of Fox Glen with their family’s devotion to the arts. They will be patrons- the Medicis of Long Island. They will buy their daughter The Love Of Reading.

Impossible though it is for Carley to imagine loving books, she is in love with a young bibliophile who cares about them more than anything. Anything, that is, but a good bottle of scotch. Hunter Cay, Carley’s best friend and Fox Glen’s resident golden boy, is becoming a stranger to her lately as he drowns himself in F. Scott Fitzgerald, booze, and Vicodin.

When the Wellses move writer Bree McEnroy-author of a failed meta-novel about Odysseus’ failed journey home through the Internet-into their mansion to write Carley’s book, Carley’s sole interest in the project is to distract Hunter from drinking and give them something to share. But as Hunter’s behavior becomes erratic and dangerous, she finds herself increasingly drawn into the fictional world Bree has created, and begins to understand for the first time the power of stories-those we read, those we want to believe in, and most of all, those we tell ourselves about ourselves. Stories powerful enough to destroy a person. Or save her.

How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson was definitely a page turner! I loved it. It took a few chapters to really get into the book, then I had a hard time putting it down.

Tanya Egan Gibson really spins a unique story. The plot is really unique, which really got my attention. Also, she writes in different point of views, which generally makes a story better. You hear from the main character Carley, her best friend Hunter, the author Bree, and a few others. It’s really interesting hearing insight from more than one or two characters.

Also the ending is really unsuspected – you don’t really consider it. Gibson leaves you with a definite ending, but two possibilities of what it meant, which leaves you pondering.

All the characters were realistic, and as the story goes on you see each grow in their own individual ways, some for the better, while others for the worse. You find yourself really feeling for the characters as they encounter problems.

Overall, How to Buy a Love of Reading was a great debut novel, I’d definitely recommend it to everyone!