Audio: The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan

Narrated by: Eilidh Beaton

Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins

Release date: 11-16-21

Publisher: HarperAudio

Women's fiction

To review

Carmen has a dead end job, and then the store closes. She likes her life, but is not really doing much. So she ends up in Edinburgh, living with her sister and working in a bookshop. She sees her sister as perfect, and is rather resentful.

And sure Sofia is rather perfect, but she works hard for it. She says that her water can broke in the office and she will then go have her baby.  But yes she needs to let loose a bit. And not to rely on her truly annoying nanny (omg, ugh the nanny.)

As for Carmen, she also have to loose some of her prejudices. She will also see how good she really is trying to turn around a bookshop. And finding out kids are not horrid.

Lots of interesting people comes into her life, a chance for romance too, but since this is not a romance it takes time.

And I really want to visit that street in xmas times now. Awww xmas times.

Good xmassy book.

The narrator had this great voice for Carmen that fitted her so well, the same with the rest if the voices too. Annoying people, stuck up people, the kids, yes everyone got the voice they deserved.

When the department store she works in closes for good, Carmen has perilously little cash and few options. She doesn’t want to move in with her perfect sister Sofia, in Sofia’s perfect house with her perfect children and her perfectly ordered Edinburgh life.

Frankly, Sofia doesn’t exactly want Carmen there either. Her sister has always been sarcastic and difficult. But Sofia has yet another baby on the way, a mother desperate to see her daughters get along, and a client who needs a retail assistant for his ailing bookshop, so welcoming Carmen might still have some benefits for everyone.

At Sofia’s behest, Carmen is thrown into the daily workings of old Mr. McCredie’s ancient bookshop on the streets of the old dark city. Can she use her design skills to revamp the store and bring it back to popularity in time to benefit from Christmas shopping traffic? Can she choose between bad boy literary rock star Blair and quiet Quaker student Oke? And will she heal the rift with the most important people of all: her family?