After jumping ahead to book three with completely different main characters, I had a lot of fun returning to the Scottish Highlands and Nina’s ever-moving bookstore in the second book of Jenny Colgan’s Scottish Bookshop series.
Zoe, a single mother with a 4-year-old son, Hari, with elective mutism, has a low-paying job, no place to live, and no help from her son’s father. However, when her son’s paternal aunt, Surinder, finds out about Huri, she gets Zoe work in Scotland and convinces her to move there. Zoe finds herself not only helping a very pregnant Nina with her van-based bookshop, but also as the au pair for three wild children in a run-down castle, whose mother has disappeared and whose father is so focused on his antiquarian book collection that he has no time for them.
This is another fun book by Jenny Colgan; a good piece of escapism. Colgan still offers running off to Scotland as the best solution to all your worldly problems, but who can really argue with the promise of fresh air, friendly neighbors, and a town full of people who love to read. I’ve never been to Scotland, so I can’t speak to the accuracy of the descriptions, but you can feel its beauty in the way Colgan writes about it, and it’s definitely on my bucket list to visit someday.
Zoe was a bit frustrating at the beginning of this book. Her original obsession with Hari’s father Jaz was very obviously short-sighted and undeserved, but, hindsight… And even later on the book when Jaz was trying to make life-changing decisions for Zoe, and she was just going to let him, was kind of bizarre, especially given their history. I do wish she had grown a bit more over the course of the book. I think there could have been the same ending or the same feeling ending, at least, even if she had actually put her foot down with Jaz. I did appreciate her developing a backbone with her charges, though, and even with Nina, and I liked her a lot more after that turning point.
Overall, this is a fun book to read if you’ve already read The Bookshop on the Corner. (And if you haven’t, definitely go back and pick that one up!)