Nic Fikry

Quick Facts

Nic Fikry at a glance:

• Role: Deceased first wife of A. J. Fikry; co-founder and social heart of Island Books
• Status: Dies in a car accident before the main timeline; appears through memories, anecdotes, and a pivotal dream
• First Appearance: Early recollections and flashbacks that frame the novel’s opening grief
• Past Life: Princeton alum; frustrated grad student; aspiring poet; visionary behind opening Island Books
• Key Relationships: A.J.; younger sister Ismay; the unborn child (two months along at her death)

Who They Are

Nic is the story’s bright absence—an irrepressible presence whose death creates the void the novel fills. She embodies the life and community A.J. has to relearn: a joyful, practical believer in books as a bridge between people. Even after her death, Nic’s values and voice continue to shape the novel’s exploration of Love, Loss, and Second Chances, turning her from a tragic memory into a guiding force. She is not just the love A.J. lost; she is the imagination and courage that once pushed him toward a shared dream—and keeps nudging him toward a future.

Personality & Traits

Nic’s personality throws A.J.’s early cynicism into relief. Where he retreats, she leans in; where he guards, she welcomes. Much of what we know arrives in glittering glimpses—party costumes, teasing banter, brisk business sense—that reveal a woman equal parts play and purpose.

• Vivacious and fun-loving: She insists on a “vampire prom” because it will be good for business and “fun,” teasing A.J., “You remember fun, right?” Her parties aren’t fluff; they’re community-building, and she delights in the spectacle.
• Intelligent and perceptive: A Princeton grad who spots potential—she hires the “surly” teen Molly Klock and worries, with shrewd accuracy, about her sister Ismay’s habit of making unwise choices.
• Business-savvy: While A.J. is the literary purist, Nic understands the economics of bookselling: events, buzz, and welcome mats get readers through the door and keep the store alive.
• Loving and playful: She calls A.J. “nerd” with affection, folding tenderness into humor. Her banter frames love as ease and everyday partnership.
• Stylish, theatrical sensibility: A.J. remembers her brown hair, cut short and gamine; at the vampire party she wears black satin and black lipstick that leaves a “bruise” of a kiss—drama as intimacy.
• Impulsive edge: A.J. recalls her as “a terrible driver who thought she wasn’t,” a fatal flaw that converts a personality quirk into irreversible tragedy.

Character Journey

Nic doesn’t develop so much as come into focus. At first she’s a shrine—A.J.’s immaculate memory of happiness lost. Over time, the novel complicates that idealization: Nic is the grad student who hated her program, the aspiring poet who doubted the academic path, the one who proposed an audacious pivot—quit, move home, and open a bookstore. In A.J.’s dream, she returns not as a ghost to haunt him but as a conscience to steer him, refusing to sanctify his self-destruction. That posthumous nudge helps him rejoin the living and, ultimately, build a family with Amelia Loman and Maya Fikry. Nic’s arc is therefore refracted through A.J.: she moves from idealized memory to active moral presence, teaching him how to honor the past without being buried by it.

Key Relationships

• A. J. Fikry: Nic is both A.J.’s partner and his counterweight—her warmth, social fluency, and practical optimism balance his reserve. She proposes the life they build together (Island Books), and her death detonates the novel’s central conflict: how to live, and love, after losing your axis.

• Ismay Evans-Parish: The younger sister is the steadier one; Nic worries Ismay chooses badly, especially in marrying the philandering Daniel Parish. Nic’s concern is caring but edged with judgment, revealing her clear-eyed assessments and protective instincts.

• The Unborn Child: Nic’s pregnancy intensifies the loss: A.J. grieves not only a wife but the future they had already begun. The unborn child symbolizes a family paused in potential, heightening the stakes of A.J.’s eventual openness to parenthood.

Defining Moments

Even from offstage, Nic shapes the plot through a few crystallized scenes that carry both story energy and thematic weight.

• The Vampire Prom

  • What happens: Nic masterminds a kitschy, wildly attended bookstore event, waltzing in black satin and joking in vampire-speak.
  • Why it matters: This scene encapsulates her ethos—book culture as party, commerce as community, spectacle in service of connection—and shows how she broadens A.J.’s world.

• The Decision to Open Island Books

  • What happens: Dissatisfied with grad school, Nic proposes quitting and starting a bookstore in her hometown.
  • Why it matters: She is the venture’s visionary, turning A.J.’s literary ideals into a public, communal life. This choice becomes the foundation of his identity—and the beacon that later guides him back.

• The Dream Intervention

  • What happens: Soon after her death, Nic appears in A.J.’s drunken dream, gently but firmly telling him he cannot go on as he has.
  • Why it matters: The dream reframes Nic as an active moral force. Her blessing to change is the hinge between grief as self-erasure and grief as a path back to love.

Essential Quotes

“Let me refresh your memory. Fun is having a smart, pretty, easy wife with whom you get to spend every working day.”

Nic defines “fun” as ease in partnership—a daily, working intimacy. The line blends romance with pragmatism, insisting that joy isn’t a rare crescendo but a habit of being together. It captures the tone of their marriage and the humane, non-grandiose happiness A.J. must relearn.

“You gotta be cool, nerd. Invite me in.”

Playful and vampiric on the surface, the line doubles as a thesis for Nic’s approach to love and bookselling: welcome me, welcome others. By teasing A.J. into hospitality, she makes inclusion a game—and, for him, a practice that will outlast her.

“You can’t go on like this.”
“I can,” A.J. says. “I have been. I will.”
She kisses him on the forehead. “I guess what I’m saying is I don’t want you to.”

This dream exchange is Nic’s posthumous permission slip. She acknowledges A.J.’s stubborn despair yet refuses to endorse it, recasting love as an insistence on the living. The kiss is both benediction and boundary: mourn me, but keep moving.

“A place is not really a place without a bookstore.”

Nic’s credo fuses geography to community, and community to reading. It justifies the leap to open Island Books and becomes A.J.’s mission statement, aligning her memory with the novel’s belief in The Power of Books and Connection. In honoring the store, A.J. honors Nic—and finds his way back to people.