*Minor spoiler / spoiler-free review*
Title: How to Find Love in a Bookshop
Author: Veronica Henry
Published: June 16th, 2016
Publisher: Orion
Find the Author: Goodreads
I received this book for review! As always, my reviews are fair and unbiased.
Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in Peasebrook, a picture-postcard Cotswold town, is a dream comes true for booklovers. Everyone who enters falls in love with something.
But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open and the developers are circling. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous – but what about the promise she made to her father? Not to mention her customers, for whom the shop is a comfort, a meeting place, a lifeline.
There’s Gary, a stable lad for a nearby trainer, who buys books to read to Nikki, who is lying in a coma. He spends every spare hour at Nikki’s bedside, never giving up hope that she will come round.
Betty, who runs a supper club from her tiny cottage, has a huge crush on a man she met and then lost in the cookery section, somewhere Auguste Escoffier and Marco Pierre White.
Mrs Norris repeatedly ‘forgets’ to pay for her books – and Emilia never has the heart to remind her. But Mrs Norris isn’t quite as forgetful as she pretends …
And then Emilia meets Dexter, local jack-the-lad, who is looking to improve his English so he can better himself. He buys all Emilia’s recommendations, and together they re-discover all her favourite authors. But Dexter has a secret, and is not all he seems…
How to Find Love in a Bookshop is the delightful story of Emilia’s fight to keep her bookshop alive, the customers whose lives she has touched – and the books they all love.
When I first heard about a novel about falling in love in a bookshop, I thought about how that’s literally every book lover’s dream. What better way to fall in love than the place we love the most? I had heard such great things about Veronica Henry’s writing from other bloggers and I was definitely excited to get started reading my first novel from her.
Nightingale Books is exactly the kind of bookshop you want to go to. It used to be owned by Julius who had sadly passed and now was passed on to his daughter; Emilia, who took over everything to do with the store. But what she didn’t expect was the multitude of things she would have to re-organise and put the store back together again to optimal condition. There are other characters that weave into the tapestry of the book, like Thomasina who’s shy and has a secret crush, Sarah who uses Nightingale Books to escape her life and Jackson who wants to buy the bookshop to convert it, working for developers, among many characters that blend into the story in their own plots. They all play important parts, but Emilia’s storyline takes center stage and I couldn’t help but become enthralled by her story, past and future that may or may not include Nightingale Books.
Everyone is there for Emilia when her father dies and the shop is left to her, book lovers and musicians among them. There is a moment when I thought maybe she would cave in to the developers and sell the store, but I knew underneath it all she had learned to love the store just as much as her father did, after all, it sounded like an idyllic, wonderful little bookshop. Not only does Emilia find herself in the store, but she finds love, friendship and happiness within the cosy walls of Nightingale Books.
Overall, How To Find Love In a Bookshop is a book that all book lovers have been waiting for. It’s a love story, friendship rollercoaster and journey all in one, all tied to one special bookshop. It had heart, love, beauty and charm and everything that I love in a story. I can’t praise it highly enough – Veronica has surely written something all book lovers are going to think is a dream read. Five stars completely.
Thank you for stopping by my tour stop for How to Find Love in a Bookshop!
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happy reading!
