Review: Book People

Book People by Jackie Ashenden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After escaping a controlling relationship, former book editor Kate returns to the small town where her mother grew up to open a bookshop in the building she inherited, apparently her great grandmother ran a tea shop in the building. She and her single mother led a peripatetic life during her childhood but bookshops always represented comfort and an escape. Kate's bookshop embraces genres, manga, romance, sci-fi, cosy mysteries - you name it. The only fly in the ointment is Sebastian who owns the highbrow bookshop directly opposite Kate's. She's tried to be friendly, but he refuses to even speak to her, he's even petty enough to rearrange his window displays deliberately to outdo Kate's.

Sebastian keeps himself to himself, his family has had the bookshop for several generations but his father and his grandfather's addictions have left the family bookshop deep in debt, and Kate opening a rival bookshop opposite him has only exacerbated the problem. Sebastian's family is unlucky in love, both his great-grandmother and grandmother left their husbands, and his own mother died when he was still young, which is why Sebastian knows he is destined to be alone. Sebastian is trying to revive the town's literary festival to (hopefully) bring some much-needed revenue to his shop. But when disaster strikes and his keynote author pulls out a week before the festival only Kate can help him save the day.

Kate is on good terms with a popular author from her editing days, a woman whose bestseller appealed to both populist and highbrow readers, if they can find a lure to encourage her to attend their small festival it will make it a winner and Sebastian has just the thing, a bunch of love letters between his great grandfather and an unknown woman.

I really enjoyed this romance because well books! However, I felt the mystery was a bit obvious to the reader, and the ending felt a bit rushed (like I'm 95% through the book and they haven't made up yet), which is odd because I've complained about the last few books by Lucy Score where the couple seem to get together about 35% into the book and then there's a lot of filler until the inevitable 'misunderstanding'.

Other than that, I will definitely look out for more books By Jackie Ashenden.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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