~ How to Find Love in a Bookshop, by Veronica Henry ~
What a wonderful title. What a lovely front cover. What a lack-lustre read.
Henry’s novel sets up Nightingale Bookshop as the centrepiece, but actually, it is nothing more than a prop for shoring up a whole cast of two-dimensional characters, who could do with a lot more shoring up than even the best, most charming, quaintest of bookshops could manage.
The bookshop is set up by the lovely Julius Nightingale, carried on after his death by his equally lovely daughter Emilia, whom everyone loves, as everyone had loved Julius. The good characters are too good to be true, and the (few) bad characters are caricature villains. The village of Peasebrook is too ye-olde-English for words, the Basildons of-the-manor-born/Downton Abbey. Everyone worthy falls in love with someone else worthy, and the obstacles — like druggie, city-boy Hugh and glamourous Parisian Delphine — step aside or are sent packing.
(Spoiler: Alice Basildon marries Hugh, finds out at the wedding he lied to her about taking drugs, runs out of her wedding without a word to her new husband, straight to her preferred man in a pub nearby, leaving her parents to explain it to Hugh and banish him. Alice is supposed to be the darling of her community, the jewel in their crown, and the reader is expected to believe that having just married Hugh, she is unable to forgive a single falsehood in what is supposed to be an established, loving, committed, hugely and mutually enjoyed relationship.)
The plotline is predictable, the stories rehearse clichéd morals, the narrative devices are heavy handed and clumsy, the situations hugely contrived and largely unconvincing. Although by no means painful or unpleasant a read, really, once you have smiled at the title and enjoyed the front cover, you’ve had the best of the book.
How to Find Love in a Bookshop, by Veronica Henry.
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