The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan Series: Kirrinfief #1
Published by HarperCollins on September 20, 2016
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Fiction / Small Town & Rural, Fiction / Women
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
Source: Bookstore
Nina Redmond is a librarian with a gift for finding the perfect book for her readers. But can she write her own happy-ever-after? In this valentine to readers, librarians, and book-lovers the world over, the New York Times-bestselling author of Little Beach Street Bakery returns with a funny, moving new novel for fans of Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop.
Nina is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.
Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile — a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.
From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.
My Review
I read this book in a matter of two days and that is simply because I had to set it down from time to time to do other things. I decided to pick this book up for a couple of reasons. Reason number one is that Desi from the Darling Desi YouTube channel recommended it to me and number two I needed a book I could get lost in during my covid quarantine and boy did I ever get lost in this story. I absolutely loved every bit of it and was sad when it ended. I had to immediately pick up the second book in the series.
The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things.
This story takes place in what I can only imagine to be two fantastic places both of which I desperately want to visit someday and that is England and Scotland. We follow the character of Nina Redmond a librarian or shall we say a literary matchmaker. Nina has a talent for pairing the right book with the right reader I mean come on it is sort of her passion. Nina enjoyed her job very much until one day it ceased to exist. This left Nina scrambling to try and figure out what she wanted to do with her life and really all she knew was it had to include books. Nina is rather shy and lacks confidence so the idea of opening up her bookstore was downright terrifying until one day she attends a workshop that builds her confidence just enough to make her realize it is not impossible.
“Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can’t fix anything. And your life might turn out to be full of regrets.”
Nina gets the idea from the workshop to maybe do a mobile bookshop so she decides to hunt down vans that are for sale. Her friends Surinder and Griffin may think she is a bit bonkers but so be it she continues on with her plan. She finds one that she believes could be absolutely perfect for this new endeavor of hers the only thing is that it is in Scotland. When she gets there she is very much intimidated by the size of this so-called van but she is determined to make a new life for herself so she buys it. The questions are will she be able to stay in Birmingham and more importantly will she be able to drive this beast of a van?
Spoiler Nina ends up in Scotland and begins a grand new adventure for herself but is she successful? The people Nina meets along the way tend to keep life interesting. Marek and Jim the men she met from the possible train collision, Lennox the grumpy landlord, Ainslee the moody teenager, and many more townsfolk kept me intrigued and smiling throughout the book. Did I mention that there is a farm and possibly a baby lamb or two that Nina has to deal with along with dances, some romance, and men in kilts. I think that if you are looking for a comfort read all about books and some serious coziness then this book is for you. I can not recommend it enough and I am super eager to continue on in the series.