The House of Marvellous Books by Fiona Vigo Marshall

​This was supposed to be lovely. I love books about books or book worlds, in this case a publishing house, populated by offbeat characters and specializing in offbeat titles. And yet the House of Marvellous Books was decidedly less than marvelous.
It’s got all the Brit-specific floppy charm of Hugh Grant’s 90s hair, but with nothing to balance it out, the story essentially overpowers itself on one note quirk.
Told in journal entries, it follows the publisher’s trajectory over one especially turbulent year as told by a young assistant editor named Mortimer. Because of course a protagonist of a book like that would be named Mortimer.
The official description says that the author based this book upon her personal experiences of working in small publishing houses, so quite likely there’s a lot here that’s based on reality, albeit quirked up for style. And charm. The charm that for me fell flat.
I’m not sure how much of this is the book’s fault and how much of it is basic reader/author incompatibility, but for me it read dramatically exhaustively (and exhaustingly) overdone. Precocious and precious in ways that didn’t quite sustain for a volume of over 300 pages, making it a somewhat plodding read.
It might have worked as a quirky BBC sitcom, but as a book it was just too much of too muchness.
Mortimer’s bestie imprisoned for book theft (of course) provided some of the comedy; there were some other comedic elements, but it didn’t quite balance out the dense quality of the epistolary narration nor the fact that Mortimer isn’t that lovable of a chap. Although he is definitely a chap. Not a lad, nor a dude, nor a fella.
So yeah, overall, not enough plot for the page count and the look-how-quaint-and-quirky charm stretched too thin. Not a terrible read by any means, but far from marvellous. Thanks Netgalley.