Saturday 18 June 2016

Review of How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry - Five **


Blurb:


Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in the idyllic Cotswold town of Peasebrook, is a dream come true for booklovers.
But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous - but what about the promise she made to her father? Not to mention the loyalty she owes to her customers.
Sarah Basildon, owner of stately pile Peasebrook Manor, has used the book shop as an escape from all her problems in the past few years. But is there more to her visits than meets the eye?
Since messing up his marriage, Jackson asks Emilia for advice on books to read to the son he misses so much. But Jackson has a secret, and is not all he seems...
And there's Thomasina, painfully shy, who runs a pop-up restaurant from her tiny cottage. She has a huge crush on a man she met and then lost in the cookery section, somewhere between Auguste Escoffier and Marco Pierre White. Can she find the courage to admit her true feelings?
How to Find Love in a Book Shop is the delightful story of Emilia's fight to keep her book shop alive, the customers whose lives she has touched - and the books they all love.




Review:


What a wonderful discovery!  This book is like one of those treasures you find hidden in a bookshop and can't believe your luck! 

It starts by alternating between the stories of Emilia, who has inherited a bookshop from her father, Julius, and Julius' own story of meeting Emilia's mother, their whirlwind romance and finding the premises for Nightingale Books.

I was expecting a romance and keep trying to pair Emilia off with the men who appeared in the story, but soon realised it was going to be so much more than that. Julius touched so many people in the 30-odd years he owned the bookshop and it is really their stories that fill this marvellous book. 

It is a gentle, loving, tribute to books, bookshops and readers everywhere. Everyone who worked for, loved, or simply bought a book from Julius was changed by him and his dedicated love of books. Emilia is desperate to continue this, but Julius was no financial expert and there is a real possibility she will lose the shop.

How she, the employees and the people who love the shop pull together is wonderful. And, as they pull together, they each learn about themselves and what they can really do!

Gorgeous book, which I am certain I will return to again and again.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.



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