What I’ve been reading…

It’s all about bookshops

This last couple of weeks I’ve been reading books set in bookshops. There are an awful lot of them in pretty much every genre.

I started by downloading samples — such a great thing. Some I didn’t read further, not because they aren’t a great read, but at that moment they weren’t what I was looking for.

Then I started reading The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser. First up, although I’m not a huge fan of illustrations on book covers, I loved this one. Always a good start.

And then there was the blurb —

Thea’s having a bad month. Not only has she been made redundant, she’s also discovered her husband of nearly twenty years is sleeping with one of her friends. And he’s not sorry…

Well, that set up isn’t exactly original, but I started reading. And what got me was that the hero/notahero wasn’t just a grumpy misogynist (again not exactly original); he was a lot worse than that.

Thea might believe that she could never be happy again, but Ned knew he didn’t deserve to be happy. And yet there was that spark that a reader of romance recognises; that great feeling that when you know this isn’t going to be just a fun romance, but something deeply emotional.

Here were two people who were lost in pain and spending time with them in the bookshop, watching them find their way out of it, was a day well spent.