But on the drive back the sun comes out and I’m feeling quite… positive. I wonder if I could live up here. Not forever, that doesn’t seem realistic. But I could definitely stay up for the summer, couldn’t I?

The Bookshop of Second Chances (From ARC, quotes may have changed in publication copy)

Thank you, NetGalley and Ballantine, for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thea Mottram is having a bad month. Her husband of nearly twenty years has just left her for one of her friends, and she is let go from her office job–on Valentine’s Day, of all days. Bewildered and completely lost, Thea doesn’t know what to do. But when she learns that a distant great uncle in Scotland has passed away, leaving her his home and a hefty antique book collection, she decides to leave Sussex for a few weeks. Escaping to a small coastal town where no one knows her seems to be exactly what she needs.

Almost instantly, Thea becomes enamored with the quaint cottage, comforted by its cozy rooms and shaggy, tulip-covered lawn. The locals in nearby Baldochrie are just as warm, quirky, and inviting. The only person she can’t seem to win over is bookshop owner Edward Maltravers, to whom she hopes to sell her uncle’s antique novel collection. His gruff attitude–fueled by an infamous, long-standing feud with his brother, a local lord–tests Thea’s patience. But bickering with Edward proves oddly refreshing and exciting, leading Thea to develop feelings she hasn’t felt in a long time. As she follows a thrilling yet terrifying impulse to stay in Scotland indefinitely, Thea realizes that her new life may quickly become just as complicated as the one she was running from. 

I think my subconscious dream must be to run away from my life and work in a bookstore because The Bookshop of Second Chances is the second book I’ve read this year where the main character does just that (Much Ado About You being the first). The book follows Thea, a forty-something-year-old woman whose life is turned upside-down when she finds out her husband of twenty years has been cheating on her with a friend of hers. Also recently fired from her job, she’s unsure of what to do, but then she receives notice that her great uncle, who passed away the year before, left her his home in Scotland and extensive book collection. 

It turns out that a move to Scotland is exactly what she needed. She starts making friends with the locals, finds joy in restoring her great uncle’s house, and even convinces Edward, the grumpy owner of the local bookshop, to give her a job. Although he hides his feelings for quite a while under a prickly exterior, from the beginning, it’s easy to see that Thea has an effect on Edward that no one else has. He hires her at the bookshop, despite never hiring women, he takes her to his little beach shed, and he buys her little presents whenever he goes out of town to buy or sell books. Despite how banter-filled and sassy most of their interactions are, it’s obvious how smitten he is with her—at least to everyone except Thea.

In terms of characters, I liked Thea, but I can’t quite decide how I feel about Edward. There were moments that I liked him, but there are some pretty significant red flags that are kind of hard to ignore and made it a little difficult to fully buy him and Thea as a couple. But overall, I liked the story. The plot is slow, but after reading a few fast-paced books, I enjoyed the change of pace. There are also several plot lines to follow besides the developing relationship between Thea and Edward—like Edward’s feud with his brother and Thea’s healing process dealing with the aftermath of her messy breakup—which made the book feel fully developed.