Scottish Bookshop #2
By Jenny Colgan
Release Date: June 25th, 2019
William Morrow Paperbacks
Source: ARC provided by the publisher
A grand baronial house on Loch Ness, a quirky small-town bookseller, and a single mom looking for a fresh start all come together in this witty and warm-hearted novel by New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan.
Desperate to escape from London, single mother Zoe wants to build a new life for herself and her son Hari. She can barely afford the crammed studio apartment on a busy street where honking horns and shouting football fans keep them awake all night. If she doesn’t find a way out soon, Zoe knows it’s just a matter of time before she has a complete meltdown. On a whim, she answers an ad for a nanny job in the Scottish Highlands, which is about as far away from the urban crush of London as possible. It sounds heavenly!
The job description asks for someone capable of caring for three “gifted children”, two of which behave feral wolverines. The children’s widowed father is a wreck, and the kids run wild in a huge tumbledown castle on the heather-strewn banks of Loch Ness. Still, the peaceful, picturesque location is everything London is not—and Zoe rises to the challenges of the job.
With the help of Nina, the friendly local bookseller, Zoe begins to put down roots in the community. Are books, fresh air, and kindness enough to heal this broken family—and her own…?
*ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest and unbiased review*
In the author introduction to this book, Author Jenny Colgan states that The Bookshop on the Shore is not a sequel to The Bookshop on the Corner (or The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, depending on when you read it), but I think all of us avid fans will always think of it as a sequel (sorry Jenny Colgan), and while in some way's I think it’s a good thing, but for me, it completely changed the way I felt about a character.
In the Bookshop on the Shore we meet single mum Zoe and her adorable, but non-speaking son Hari, who lives in a crummy bedsit (studio) in London. In between her job, taking Hari to specialists to find out while he is not talking, and the very sporadic visits from his father Jaz. But Zoe's life gets drastically when she finds out that their bedsit was up for rent 'reappraisal', which basically meant the landlord wanted to jack up the rent to get the rich office workers in, and the low-income people out. She did what she could only do, reach out to Jaz and if he could help, and that’s how Zoe found her way heading up to Scotland to be a nanny and take care of The Little Shop of Happy Ever After! And how they got there, well...you will just have to read the book to find out.
Fear not Jenny Colgan fans! You will meet some character from the first book, Nina, Surinder and Lennox, and plenty of new ones too. The writing is superb and the story is gripping, and by the end of the book, you fall in love.
I give The Bookshop by the Shore 5 stars.
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