QUIET NEIGHBORS (Catriona McPherson)

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.