Recommended for You by Laura Silverman
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2020, 272 pages
Trigger Warnings: Mention of divorce
About the Author: “Laura Silverman is an author and freelance editor and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned her MFA in Writing for Children at the New School. Her books include Girl Out of Water, You Asked for Perfect, It’s a Whole Spiel, and the upcoming Recommended for You. Girl Out of Water was a Junior Library Guild Selection, and You Asked for Perfect was named to best teen fiction lists by YALSA, Chicago Public Library, and the Georgia Center for the Book.” (Bio taken from author’s website.)
Twitter: @LJSilverman1
Website: https://www.laurasilvermanwrites.com
Hashtags: #RecommendedForYou
Recommended for You takes place over the course of just one week. Shoshanna Greenberg is a peppy, sixteen-year-old Jewish girl who works at her dream job: Once Upon, a local bookstore. When Myra, her boss, announces a storewide competition with the grand prize of $250 to boost employee morale during the holidays, Shoshanna thinks she’ll be the obvious winner. That is, until the new bookstore employee, Jake Kaplan—a hardworking sixteen-year-old Jewish boy—proves that he’s quite the competition.
More than just an enemies-to-lovers bookstore romantic comedy, Recommended for You touches on a myriad of issues. Shoshanna is portrayed as a very relatable, realistic teenager who struggles with recognizing boundaries and thinking through her behavior before acting. Though the book is thoroughly adorable and quick-paced, it also shows Shoshanna’s two moms having trouble in their marriage and the consequential effects that has on their daughter’s life. Besides Shoshanna, the novel also features a diverse cast of characters in which Silverman wrote with obvious care. Recommended for You is a fun and lighthearted rom-com full of book puns, bookseller antics, and a surprising depth. I would definitely “recommend it for you.”
(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for sending us an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)
PRR Writer, Caroline Ross