Published 2022 by Penguin
400 pages
Genre: Romance
Keywords: life-long friendship, girlfriends, book shop, travelling, west USA and Joshua and Zion National Parks: , the Maldives, tourism, Cornwall,
Grade: 2/5
Will I read more by this author: no
Jenny and Marianne have always been friends since going to school. They are quite different but complement each other in a good way. Jenny finished university having studied English literature and how to manage a business, she had always dreamed of opening a bookstore. Marianne went to the university of Life, working on a cruise ship, seeing the world and sometimes Jenny travelled to meet her. Jenny is the organized and planning person in everything, while Marianne is spontaneous, always doing what she wants without considering anybody or thinking it through. But for the last three years they have managed to turn their bookshop into a success story with a lot of events even it is at a village in Cornwall, UK. They had lived together until recently when Jenny moved into a flat above the bookshop and has allowed Evan, Marianne’s brother, to stay in the guestroom; Jenny has always had a crush on Evan. Jenny feels burned out and stressed, feels she works too much and alone, never takes a holiday, while Marianne takes off and abroad. Marianne has a new boyfriend Drew who has published a book and is writing a new one and has come to their Cornwall village for research. Jenny has been surfing the internet for beautiful resorts and vacation sites. A resort in the Maldives is looking for somebody to establish a bookshop within three months, Evan persuades Jenny to apply and she gets it; but Marianne and Drew had made plans to make a literary trip to California during the same period. They have a fall out and do not speak with each other but Evan suggests he will manage the bookshop for the time they all travel.
Each of them try to manage by themselves, they are not speaking, but they discover that they function better when they are together because they supplement each other in work. Marianne’s lack of planning and organizing get her and Drew into a lot of odd misfortunes; while Jenny realizes that Marianne’s creativity and spontaneity is very important in the success of their bookstore.
A quote (page 274): people mentioned how they love reading books set in places they are currently on holiday. After having managed a bookshop for 3 years in a tourist village in Cornwall - only now you realize this basic lesson!?
My thoughts:
I found the persons superficial and not very interesting. For people running a bookstore I did not find any worthwhile recommendations for readings. I have not been to the Maldives and do not consider staying at a resort interesting or worth my time. On the other hand, I have explored California and been to Joshua National Park, I would not spend a full week there even if I had two months to travel around. Las Vegas, I got fed up after 24 hours it unreal, superficial, not real, the low-side of man-made civilization. Then they went to Zion National Park (page 306: it was serene and rustic, with a view over the canyons of Zion, and it was utterly silent), Zion National Park is an experience of over-tourism and the number of visitors is too much, everywhere you stand in a line everything for the shuttle bus, to take a photo, it is flooded with too many people and is more busy than Times Squares in New York, at least it was in June 2017 when we were there. My feeling was the author had not been to these places she may have seen phots of it; here you have some of mine:
The author, Lucy Dickens is a pseudonym for Lisa Dickenson
I would not spend a week here even if I had two months to travel; there are so many national parks around the Colorado Circle, everyone so different from each other.
In June 2017 we had to stand almost two hours in line to get to the shuttle bus taking us into the park. Over-run by tourists; no peace and quiet as the book tries to tell us.
A photo from behind a waterfall
Zion National Park is a beautiful place. In 1979 we hiked the Narrows; then there were nobody but us. Like in the book the Narrows was off limits in 2017.
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