Book Review of
All Booked Up

Lynn's Review

All Booked Up by Melody Carlson is a clean romance book.

All Booked Up is Melody Carlson’s latest book. After Riva’s husband passed away, she struggled to afford to keep her home. It was a house she loved, and it contained too many books to move into a smaller one. 

After meeting a woman at a grief support event, she decides to rent out a few of her bedrooms to help her afford to keep her house.

She rents to a friend who is divorced, a widow, a musician, and a hairdresser. They are different ages and come from different backgrounds, and it is an adjustment for Riva to have others in the house. Can she make it work? 

I have read multiple Christmas books by Meldoy Carlson, so I had high hopes for this one. I love a book about books. It is set in the Pacific Northwest, a place I love. And it is about older women, which can be rare in the book world. 

In the end, this book just wasn’t for me.

I struggled to like the characters in this book and the decisions they made. Riva was fine, but the others, I just had trouble connecting with. 

I also felt like I was back in high school reading this. There was so much high school-like behavior from grown adults. 

This book also had so much potential for the house to be a more developed character. There were some descriptions of the house, but I didn’t feel like I was there. 

I also felt that way about the Pacific Northwest setting. I felt like this book could have been set anywhere. I am from Oregon, so I know the Pacific Northwest. If this book did not say it was set there, I would never have known. Nothing made me feel like I was in the Pacific Northwest while reading this book. 

Overall, All Booked Up by Melody Carlson was fine, and I think fans of Melody Carlson will probably enjoy it. I just feel like the writing could have been much more descriptive, and the characters could have acted a little more like grown-ups.

I know I will probably be in the minority, but this book was just not for me.