This is very different from the novels that I usually read. Jude flees London for obscure reasons (a broken marriage? a crime? grief?) and ends up returning to a messy bookstore in Scotland that she and her then-husband had visited on an earlier holiday. She ends up taking a job at the bookstore and forming a sort of family with the shop's owner, Lowland (Lowell) Glen, and his newly discovered daughter.
This is a novel about identity. Who is Jude and why is she so fearful about her past being discovered? Is Lowell's daughter really his daughter with one-night-stand Miranda, now deceased, and is she really pregnant with Lowell's grandchild? Who are the quiet neighbors and what is the long-deceased neighbor whose books are buried in Lowell's shop trying to communicate with the obscure notes/reviews he left in so many of the volumes he owned? What the heck is going on with Mrs. Hewitt, old Dr. Glen's nurse, who lives in a cottage on Lowell's property?
I found the story to be somewhat confusing, to tell you the truth. I would have liked a bit more revelation about Jude's past earlier on because it was difficult to even like her when you had no idea if she was a criminal, a grief-stricken daughter, or just irresponsible. I DID, however, enjoy the atmosphere tremendously. You could almost smell the dusty books and feel the grottiness of the bookshop. I loved the cottage in the cemetery, though, and wish I could visit it or live there myself! I noticed that some people on Amazon described this as a cozy, which it certainly is not. It is atmospheric, mysterious, annoying, and sometimes downright scary, but it is definitely not cozy.
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