The Bookshop on the Corner

Such potential! Eighty percent of this novel was charming and delightful and just the adventure I was dreaming of for this reading experience. However, it bottomed out with explicit nude and sex scenes that were wholly inappropriate and unnecessary. Those scenes spoiled this entire book for me, and they cheapened the romance too, which had, prior to that intrusion, been of the sweeping, utterly sweet variety.

Before the story began, there was a delightful list of good reading spots. The author had a knack for description here, which led me to believe, and rightly so, that the book would be atmospheric to a high degree. It certainly lived up to that foreshadowing!

I absolutely loved the bookshop-in-a-van premise! That wasn't at all what I thought this story would be from the cover that looked like a storefront shop, but it was charming all the same. I only wish the cover would have had a cutesy van stuffed with books or some such emblazoned upon it.

Except for the aforementioned inappropriate scenes, I really enjoyed the leading lady. She had such a compassionate heart. It was fun seeing her helping those aching folks around her—and not just in finding the perfect-for-them book.

There were some pretty sweet themes of new beginnings and carving out one's spot in a well-established community.

Content: alcohol/drunkenness, profanity, expletives, replacement expletives, pubs, crude sexual terms, affair, nudity, explicit sex scenes