Jenny Colgan

Single mom Zoe is at the end of her rope. She adores her four-year-old son, Hari, but is concerned that he still hasn’t started talking; he’s silent even when he cries. Zoe is also struggling financially, and Hari’s father Jaz is too busy chasing his dream of being a DJ to help out with child support. Fortunately, Jaz’s sister Surinder has a solution: her friend Nina needs help with her mobile bookshop in the Scottish highlands, and there’s also a live-in nanny position that Zoe show more could take to supplement her income and have a place to stay. Desperate, Zoe agrees, but she soon finds that both jobs are more difficult than she’d anticipated. Nina has very specific ideas about the right way to run the bookmobile, and some of Zoe’s innovations don’t go over very well. And at the “big house” where Zoe is to be the new nanny, she finds three out-of-control children who don’t want to listen to her, while their single father Ramsey seems to be totally disconnected from his children’s lives. The longer Zoe perseveres, however, the more successful she becomes, and the more she grows to love her new life. But when Jaz suddenly reenters the picture, she must decide where she truly belongs.

I’ve come to rely on Jenny Colgan for sweet, uplifting books with a hint of romance, and this book delivers on all fronts. It’s sort of a sequel to The Bookshop on the Corner, which focuses on Nina and the opening of her mobile bookshop, but it can be read as a stand-alone. I was in Zoe’s corner from the opening scene, where she’s sitting in a doctor’s office and describing all the times she cries in a given week. I was immediately hoping for good things to happen to her and excited to watch her overcome the various obstacles in her path. She’s a very likable heroine, hardworking and determined to do her best in any given situation. Sure, the actual plot isn’t terribly believable, nor is it unique; of course Zoe will eventually win over the difficult children and find her way to professional and romantic success. I also thought the precocious youngest child was completely implausible, but he was so entertaining that I didn’t mind. I should note that there is some depiction of mental illness in the book (including self-harm), which seems a bit dark for the overall tone of the novel. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this one a lot and look forward to my next Colgan book. show less

Gertie MacIntyre has always been a bit of dreamer and can't quite believe that she's somehow nearly thirty, still living at home in a cottage with her mother, grandmother, and too much wool, and working at the local grocery store on the small island in the Scottish Highlands where she grew up. When a new opportunity arrives for Gertie to work for the small local airline, Gertie who often deals with her problems by burying herself in her knitting, decides to be brave and make the change. But show more one small change leads to another and Gertie finds herself in situations she never would have expected just a few months ago.

Jenny Colgan writes some really lovely cozy fiction and this latest novel is no exception. Of course, setting it on a small Scottish island and including lots of fibre crafts basically made it catnip for me and I'm so delighted I picked it up. There is plenty of cozy Scottishness but with a rather dramatic third act that made the last chunk of the novel fly by. If you've never tried Colgan before, this is a great book to try as your first, and if you have, then you'll definitely enjoy this one. Recommended, with the warning that you'll probably want to run away to Scotland when you read it. show less

2024 Advent, Day 19: I am a complete cliche of a booknerd, but I really do love a book about loving books. This story follows a Librarian whose been made redundant and comes up with the idea to run a Bookshop bus. As someone who got my library science degree last year, it was admittedly quite depressing to read the redundancy opening chapters, but I can't say I would have reacted differently to Nina's circumstance. (Side note-- why are so many book loving book characters named Nina? ) I too show more would love to run my own Bookshop. (Fun fact: I do actually have all my personal books catalogued and have a functioning online library interface and borrowing system established for members of my library (friends that ask for books) and so I do, in a way, currently have one)
Overall, a cosy cute read that I would not say is great in a literary sense, but could be in a personal one show less

All around us library budgets are being cut, hours reduced, staff made redundant. Those who manage to hang onto their jobs are busy in ways that don't mesh with traditional ideas of librarianship; technology and finding ways to be relevant in an age of computers is one of the biggest challenges for libraries of today. So what happens to those old-fashioned (but not necessarily old in age) librarians whose true love is books and helping the right book into the right reader's hand? Where do show more these folks go when the scope of the library changes so significantly that this is just a small, small portion of the job? In Jenny Colgan's lovely new novel, The Bookshop on the Corner, main character Nina faces this very conundrum when her own library branch is closed and unwilling to pivot away from her focus on books, she loses her job.

Nina is quiet, bookish, and unassertive. She is a fount of knowledge about books but this skill isn't enough to help her make the move to the more technologically focused centralized library. As the move is going on, she must attend training sessions, one of which asks her to look into her heart and figure out what she would do if she wasn't a librarian. The answer surprises her although it doesn't surprise her friend and flatmate, who worries that Nina's ever burgeoning book collection will cause their flat to collapse. It turns out that Nina would like to own a bookshop. Renting premises is impractical and so she sets her heart on a mobile bookshop somewhere that people are in need of books and her skill of connecting people to the right book. When she finds a van online that would be perfect for a mobile bookshop, she hies to rural Scotland to take a chance on her dream. After doubts and road blocks, both internal and external, she lands in Kirrinfief, Scotland, ready to change her life. As she works toward following her dreams and gaining confidence, she finds community and belonging and, embracing actual real life, she starts to live a life outside of the pages of her beloved books.

Nina is a timid mouse of a character who slowly blossoms in the right climate. The secondary characters, Marek, the train conductor/engineer; Lennox, Nina's landlord--a crusty, cynical farmer; Surinder, Nina's best friend from Birmingham who comes to visit; and Ainslee and Ben, the children Nina grows close to in town, are all delightful and appealing. Each of them is not only a fully fleshed character in their own right but each of them shows the reader a new facet of Nina's personality. The story is a charming and sweet romance, with books, between townspeople and a welcome outsider, and between Nina and a good man. Although Nina faces some setbacks and disappointments, these are not dwelt upon nor is the reality of the non-book work (accounting and the like) involved in opening a business really mentioned, giving the novel a dreamy, fairy tale feel. The story is a gentle and joyous look at the good in life and it will appeal to fans of whimsical, feel-good tales, those who love books about bookselling, and those for whom a small Scottish village is their idea of heaven. In short, it appeals to someone very much like me! show less