#HotTreeSummer? I’m for it.

Must Love Trees is a cheesy & charming unconventional beginner’s guide to trees. Author Tobin Mitnick’s adoration for trees shines through every page, and his eagerness is catching.

The beginning of the book is a jumble of personal and pseudo-personal stories, which were really engaging (and one fictionalized story in particular was strikingly poignant) but a bit chaotically organized.

Then there’s a brief section on what makes up a tree - and then the bulk of the book is spent going through a selection of North American trees one by one. Mitnick frames all of this at “Tree High”, giving the trees superlatives, bleacher placements, and more. This was fun, but 100+ pages of this specific silly format is a lot. I kind of wished he switched it up when he moved from one tree category to the next. 

It’s fun and it’s cheeky. I adored the illustrations and was bummed to see that they weren’t on every page - it’s hard to get a grasp on each tree without seeing it depicted in some way! 

CW: brief mentions of mental illness

Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)