The Bookshop on the Corner Review: A Scottish Highlands Book Love Story

Read time: 5 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio 📢 Narrated by Helen Lloyd ⏱ Duration: 10 hours
Genre: Cozy Romance 🏷️ Publisher: William Morrow / HarperCollins

Book blurb

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker, a librarian with a gift for finding the perfect book for every reader. But when her library job disappears, she has to write her own next chapter. Determined to start over, Nina moves to a quiet village far from city life, buys an old van, and turns it into a mobile bookshop, driving from neighborhood to neighborhood and changing lives one recommendation at a time. Between helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb and sharing picnics with a train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s more adventure and soul in this new life than she expected. A warm, funny valentine to readers and booksellers everywhere, from the New York Times bestselling author of Little Beach Street Bakery.

Let’s talk about the book

I found this one completely by accident. It popped up in the recommendations on my Libby app, and because I’d already read a Jenny Colgan before (and met her, and heard her speak, and I still have a signed copy of one of her books sitting on my shelf like a small treasure), I thought, why not. So I hit play on The Bookshop on the Corner on a random Wednesday evening while I was starting to cook dinner.

Good thing I didn’t burn that dinner. Honestly.

This book was so good. I fell in love with Nina almost immediately, and then I fell in love all over again when she fell in love with the Scottish Highlands. There’s a community feel to this book that just wraps around you. Helen Lloyd’s narration deserves its own paragraph, actually, because her accent work is glorious. Girl, you rock. I loved this book more because of what she did with it.

And then there’s the bookshop itself. A bookshop on wheels, driving from village to village. If that image alone doesn’t do something to you, I don’t know what will.

But my favorite thing, the thing I keep coming back to, is Nina’s gift. She recommends books to people based on what she quietly picks up about them, and they resist at first (of course they do), and then they read the book and end up loving it anyway. I want that so badly for myself. I want to walk into her bookmobile and let her hand me a stack of books I didn’t know I needed.

There’s a small foreword at the start of the book where Jenny Colgan talks about new beginnings, about having faith while you’re walking blind through the hard parts, because things do turn right eventually and it gets bright again. I’m going through a difficult stretch of my own right now, and those words landed somewhere deep. I actually reached out to Jenny Colgan afterward just to tell her that. To say that her book found me at the right moment and became a small beacon of hope in a dark patch.

At its heart this is a straightforward love story set in the Highlands, but it’s told with that particular Jenny Colgan warmth that makes even the familiar feel new. I loved every page of it. Every single one.

Would I recommend it?

Yes, without hesitation. This is the kind of book you press into someone’s hands (or in this case, their earbuds) and say trust me. Nina, the bookmobile, the Highlands, Helen Lloyd’s narration, that foreword. There wasn’t a single thing in this listen that I didn’t love, and it landed at exactly the right moment for me too.

If you loved this, try these next

• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett — short, funny, and just as in love with the quiet power of reading as Nina is.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George — another book obsessed with the idea that the right book finds the right reader at the right time.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin — a grumpy bookseller and a small community that reshapes his whole life, same tender bookish energy.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Cafe by the Sea by Jenny Colgan — if the Highlands got you, this one trades the bookmobile for a Scottish island and a cafe.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan — Colgan’s other cozy reinvention story, this time with a bakery instead of a bookshop.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Found your next favorite bookshop yet?

Have you met Nina and her bookmobile? Tell me in the comments, and if you’ve read the rest of the Kirrinfief series, no spoilers, but I need to know what’s coming.

Book Links:

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Follow Jenny Colgan for latest on her books
Check out more books from William Morrow and Harper Collins