And the stupid thing was, even with everything that had happened, up here in the peace and the wilds of the great valleys and deep lochs of Scotland she had found something that suited her, that soothed her soul: a peace and quiet, a feel for the landscape that she’d never known before, for gentle husbanding and wild creatures, and a sense that things didn’t have to change; that skyscrapers didn’t have to be thrown up in minutes for foreign investors; that seasons would come and go with the clouds passing across the sky, but also that everything would come around again and find itself much as it had been generations ago, in the farms and the rivers and the towering cliffs and the gentle running valleys, where life did not move so fast that there wasn’t time to settle down with a cup of tea and a piece of shortbread and a book.
Jenny Colgan
Sometimes you just need a soft book to sink into–cozy stories with happy endings and rich descriptions of time and place. Jenny Colgan’s books are some of those for me and I’ve reread this one a few times. Nina Redmond works in a Birmingham, England library before budget cuts close down her location. She decides (with a little help from Scottish locals) to buy an old beat up van and turn it into a mobile bookshop but is thwarted when she realizes she’s unable to get the licenses she needs to park the van in England’s major cities.
A small Scottish town welcomes her after their local bookshop had closed and she moves into a restored outbuilding on the farm of a grumpy, albeit tall and handsome, sheep farmer with a dog named Parsley. (I’m sure you have no idea where this is going.)
What follows is a sweet story of a girl unexpectedly finding her life and love in a small town. And if you know anything about my personal story, you know I completely get it.