Today we bring you another book review, our first one of 2025 and this time around we will be talking about one of 2024 Goodreads’ Best Fiction and Debut Novels – Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.
Back in late autumn, I decided to order some books I’d been eyeing for a while as both the holidays and my friends’ birthdays were coming up and they’re all bookworms like me. One of the books I’ve chosen for myself, however, was Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. I really wanted to read this novel for quite some time and what better occasion than winter and being stuck at work all day? I didn’t even know the book was nominated this year for Goodreads’ Best Fiction (and Debut Novel) and I can see now why that was – even though it starts very slowly, the book manages to lure you into its bookish world and deliver a great “healing” type of story you can resonate with. Let me not ramble on and get into this short and direct review.
From Goodreads: There was only one thing on her mind. ‘I must start a bookshop.’ Yeongju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop. In a quaint neighbourhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married coffee roaster, and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju – they all have disappointments in their past. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop becomes the place where they all learn how to truly live.
Should be spoiler free and short so read ahead!
I’ve been wanting to read this little piece of “healing fiction” for a while now and have finally managed to snag a copy of it last month. When I first started reading Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, I wasn’t quite sure I was going to like it. It felt like the plot was moving incredibly slowly and that the characters only existed there without me being able to connect with them. However, the deeper into Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop I got, the more I started to shape these characters, especially our main one Yeongju, in my head, beginning to understand the way they behave and think while discovering some things about my own self along the way. I love the way she touches on topics such as divorce, mental health, and professional and private crises, and manages to give an insightful view that resonated with me a lot.
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop really is a “healing” book – it felt as if someone was giving me a comforting hug at the end of the day and there have been quite a lot of paragraphs I’ve saved because they spoke to me so deeply. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is a story about regular, everyday people and their musings, problems, dilemmas, and their path towards discovering what they like, dislike, and care deeply about. By the end of the book, I felt genuinely sad to finish it and part ways with this lovely community. The relationship between different characters was portrayed so well, and with such intimate feelings that it really made me connect with all of them. At times the pace was very slow, but I grew to like it and to find comfort in it. I think this slow tempo of the book managed to make it feel even more intimate as if you were a part of the bookshop as well and all of their thinking.
Another thing I would like to praise is the English translation of the book done by Shanna Tan who did an exceptional job with it! She managed to really transfer the emotions and that warm atmosphere (filled with occasional existential dread we all encounter) that made this book so special. A more than solid 4.5/5 stars for this genre from me.
What a debut novel!