Jenny Colgan is one of my favourite writers for those days when you need to escape. Her books are always full of people you’d like to go out for a drink with, facing the kinds of dilemmas we all face, with heart and humour and courage. She tends to write books in clusters, that is to say, she creates a setting and furnishes it with various people whose stories you follow over the course of two or three novels. And the reason I make the point about setting, is because setting becomes as much of a character as any of the individuals whose lives we’re being welcomed into.

I adored her series of books about Mure, and The Bookshop on The Shore follows on (kind of) from The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, although it’s not essential to have read the first one in order to enjoy this one. Jenny’s love for Scotland’s wild, sweeping geography, along with the way she weaves the weather (I never knew the difference between the ‘gloaming’ and a ‘haar’ before) into the plot and the lead character’s experiences make the landscape part of the story.

Speaking of which, I won’t spoil it for you, but the thrust of the novel is a bit like a Von Trapp update only without Nazis. A young single mother ends up in the depths of the Scottish countryside looking after a troop of traumatized children for the local Laird whilst at the same time attempting to make a success of a travelling bookshop on behalf of the heroine of Little Shop of Happy Ever After, who’s having a baby. Her own young son (Hari) is late to speak, and there are some absolutely (and I use that word advisedly) heartwarming/funny/sad interactions later on in the book between young Hari and Patrick, the youngest child of the Laird. There’s a mystery to be uncovered, lessons about the different shapes and sizes that families now come in, and about the ways that children understand and express love, loss and everything in between. And of course, there’s a love story too.

I pre-ordered this one on Amazon and binge-read it as soon as it arrived, knowing that there will be the pleasure of then re-reading it at leisure, more than once, curled up on the sofa or lying in the bath instead of snatched moments standing waiting for the kettle to boil or crammed onto a busy train. Just perfect.