Entitled: Life isn’t easy when you’re a book

A love letter to books, travel and the people we meet along the way.

This charming, humorous, warm-hearted novel follows the extraordinary adventures of an extraordinary book. Entitled is told from the perspective of a book as it reluctantly travels from San Francisco to Paris, London and New York in search of a home. As it is read, misplaced, loaned and abandoned, our book, like its Readers, discovers love and heartbreak, loneliness and friendship, and ultimately becomes the author of its own journey. In the end, Entitled reveals the pull between the story we are born with and the one we wish to create for ourselves.

BlueInk Review May 2021

Cookie Boyle has written a smart, funny, and heartfelt novel that captures the unexpected adventures in the life of a book.

In this tale, the aforementioned Book is a character unto itself. The story within the Book’s pages, The Serendipity of Snow, explores the life of a young girl growing up in Minnesota in the late 1800s, where she struggles against society’s expectations and the world’s confines. While sitting on a shelf in a San Francisco bookstore waiting for her own journey to begin, the Book relates to her inner main character’s dilemma: “I guess I’m the same, dreaming about a life beyond this aisle.”

The Book is soon purchased by a nice woman as a book club read, only to later get placed in a makeshift coffee shop. Eventually, it lands with a French woman travelling back to Paris, but a series of mishaps and exchanges ultimately move it along to London, New York, and other U.S. cities.

From the hands of a struggling writer who spends a mere euro for the Book at a book stall along the Seine, to those of a film director and Midwestern studies teacher who work to bring its story to the screen, to its forever home with the Book’s own author, the Book is read, misplaced, loaned, and book-napped. Contemplating its own life, and that of its varied Readers, it experiences a revelation regarding the emotional highs and lows of love and heartbreak, apprehension, loneliness, and friendship.

Boyle’s charmingly anthropomorphized literary characters present astute and whimsical observations. Whether the Book faces the bluntness of a self-absorbed Dictionary or the flirtatious advances from a volume of French Poetry, the conversations are bright and engaging, and border notes provide an artful touch of commentary from the Readers who share the Book’s odyssey.

Told from its unique perspective, this is an imaginative, well-written narrative. For bibliophiles looking for a lighthearted, clever, and fun read, Entitled proves a perfect offering.

Kirkus Reviews

“A unique and playful work about books that nicely pushes the limits of characterization.”