Nov 18

Nov 18 Review: The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan

book review, bookshops, fiction, scottish fiction

I’d like to state up front that I will entertain NO hate for reading this in November. The world is a binfire and we need to grasp whatever joy we can find. I reactivated Hallmark channel this week too, and have zero regrets.   

Anyhow. If you, also, require a little joy, let me recommend The Christmas Bookshop. It’s set mostly in Edinburgh, at - better sit down - Christmas, and is fully gorgeous.

The Christmas Bookshop - Jenny Colgan

Sphere

Carmen has just lost her job at a small failing department store in a west coast town, and has reluctantly agreed to move out of her parents' house and go stay for a while with her sister in Edinburgh. Sofia is a successful high-flying lawyer, has a handsome husband, incredible house, and three children with another on the way. Everything, in short, that Carmen is not - and doesn’t she know it. Safe to say the relationship between the sisters is strained, at best.   

Working in a failing shop is one of Carmen's only CV entries, so perhaps it's not a surprise that that’s all her sister can come up with as a suggestion for filling her days. One of Sofia's clients is rattling around in his lossmaking bookstore. Teetering on the brink of forced closure through bankruptcy, the owner will soon lose the last thing he loves - but if Carmen can at least get the shop to turn a profit for the next few weeks, then it could be sold as a going concern in the new year.   

Colgan's cast of characters is brilliant. Sofia's kids and nanny are recognisable to anyone that's spent any time in certain parts of Edinburgh, and I especially enjoyed the middle child who is more like Carmen than Sofia may have liked.

The potential love interests are well-drawn, and the customers and other shopkeepers keep the story moving while providing their own splashes of human interest.   The bookshop arc is a beaut - I love a good order-out-of-chaos story and this one has it in spades. Victoria Street in Edinburgh really is the perfect setting for this tale; the grand curving street is worth a visit at any time of year, but Christmas is the most magical for sure.   

I took myself to Edinburgh last year for a night and could have stayed on Victoria Street all evening, watching the world go by

The second in the series - Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop - came out last week, so if you need more Edinburgh bookshops in your life (and who doesn’t, really?) then get on it.

Enjoy the joy.