Coincidences abound,
and only at the end is the dramatic tension ratchetted up a little. (Review by Margaret
von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
The Bookshop Ladies
by Faith Hogan is yet another novel with the word “Bookshop” (or Library, or
Bookseller) in the title. They are presumably intended to entice those who like
reading and books, but it is beginning to seem more than a little obvious.
Here, in a dramatic opening, Joy Blackwood makes a startling discovery about her art dealer husband’s past at the moment of his death in Paris.
What she had thought was an idyllic marriage, marred only by the lack of children, is now tarnished, and she falls into a state of depression. And then, when it comes to the reading of the will, she discovers that he has left a valuable painting to a woman she has never heard of in a small town in Ireland. So she heads to Ballycove to deliver the bequest and to try to find out why this woman has inherited it and how it relates to the shattering discovery.
She finds Robyn, who is, with monumental ineptitude, trying to establish a second-hand bookshop while pining for Kian, who is not interested in her in the same way – he merely sees her as an old friend. Joy, who fortuitously has all the PR skills that are needed to make the shop a roaring success, becomes involved in helping Robyn – hence the “Bookshop Ladies”.
And in alternating sections, we find out about Robyn’s mother, Fern, who is a successful artist. As we learn about her past, and her difficult present with a cheating husband, the two strands come together and the two bookshop ladies morph into three.
The main problem with the book is that it suffers from a serious overdose of warm fuzzies. Everyone is incredibly, overwhelmingly nice, and even when they have reason to be something else, they get over it pretty quickly and become even nicer. Some of the men are less appealing, but they are sketched so thinly that they hardly register. Coincidences abound, and only at the end is the dramatic tension ratchetted up a little. And even then, we are left with a cozy conclusion of the happily-ever-after kind.
Faith Hogan is a popular author, has several bestsellers to her name and obviously knows what her regular readers want. Her writing is competent, if a little cliched – people shake like a leaf and so on. But for readers who like some kind of real tension or challenge in their entertainment, there is little here. - Margaret von Klemperer
The Bookshop Ladies is published by Head of Zeus - ISBN 9781803282589