My favorite movie is You’ve Got Mail. It’s peak Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, classic falling in love via AOL, a small local bookstore, and all the spark that a Nora Ephron movie is known to have. That’s all to say, I’m a sucker for a bookshop romance.
Unfortunately, all my hope and Hallmark fueled inspiration really fell flat for me. Jenny Colgan has apparently cornered the market on Scottish bookshop romances, so I was hopeful this would hold up to the good news I heard about her other book, The Bookshop on the Corner. You have the main character, Carmen (classic unkempt British sister), who is just trying to get her life together, but not too much. Her character is unclear in development, as a mix of being portrayed as lazy, edgy, driven, and distracted, without much of a direction in how she is planning on growing. The other characters similarly have mixed motives, backgrounds, and personalities. The romantic plots overshadowed the larger plot and character development, but without the steaminess I usually find in place of defined plot.
Please don’t read this book unless you really really want to. Do you want a cute bookshop story? Read The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. Are you looking for a cute Holiday romance? The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox. But for all that is good, you don’t need to read this book, I promise.
