This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
You know those ‘To Be Read’ piles that sit next to your bed and slowly multiply as work and life gets in the way? One week it’s three books tall, the next week you’ve wandered down the book aisle in Tesco and its now 6 books tall etc…well, that’s Nina’s house.
Heaving with books, so many that her housemate, Surinder, won’t let her bring anymore into their house, Nina’s life has never been anything but books but when the local library where she works gets taken over and turned into a ‘media centre’ Nina finds herself dreaming about the little bookshop that she’s always wanted to own herself. Not wanting to work in a world of ‘media’ and having been made redundant Nina begins searching for her little shop of happily ever after. Which turns out to be a dilapidated old van owned by a man called Wuillie, in the tiny Scottish village of Kirrinfief where bookshops are non-existent but readers certainly are not. Nina creates a mobile bookshop, decorated with twinkly lights and cushions that slowly draws the villagers of Kirrinfief to her and re-ignites their love of reading and Nina’s love of life.
Nina is me. Okay, I don’t work in a library but I do spend my days dreaming of my own little bookshop that is also a bakery where people come and swap books on rickety bookshelves above an open fire and eat cake and drink frothy coffee with too much cream on top. I’m sure I’m not alone in this dream, there’s many of you reading this review right now wishing and hoping for the same thing. Nina is instantly likeable, from the moment she drives home in her tiny car crammed with books that she has ‘adopted’ before they are thrown out from the library where she works and her vivacious housemate, Surinder won’t let her in. She needs to find a home for them and, Surinder makes very clear, that home is not in their small Birmingham house. At a crossroads in her life, bored with the city and her love life Nina decides to make a change, despite the negative feelings of some of the people around her, wait until you meet unlikely friend, Griffin. After buying her mobile bookshop, making some unusual new friends along the way, Nina decides to move to Kirrinfief and start a new life and classic novels, beautiful landscapes and adventures with sexy farmers ensue.
What I loved most about this book is that it’s warm and fuzzy with a hint of comedy. Classic Jenny Colgan writing. The characters are loveable, even if you don’t always agree with their choices, though Surinder is a hoot all the way through and I finished the book, envying Nina’s bookshop. Jenny Colgan writes in the blurb that this book is ‘for and about readers’ and I for one could not agree more.
10/10
READ MORE ABOUT THE LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPY EVER AFTER