Book Review - Mending Lost Dreams at the Highland Repair Shop by Kiley Dunbar

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Title: Mending Lost Dreams at the Highland Repair Shop

Author: Kiley Dunbar

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Boldwood Books

Publication Date: 22nd November 2025

Rating: 4 Stars

Curl up with this BRAND-NEW heartwarming, romantic and inspiring Highlands-set story that will leave a smile on your face 💗🏔️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan, Veronica Henry and Heidi Swain.

Every book in the Highland Repair Shop series can be read as a standalone.

🧵🪡 Welcome to the Highland Repair Shop, where mending broken things – be they clocks, compasses or hearts – is a way of life.

After a gruelling few years in city hospitals, trainee doctor Alice hopes a new, small-town post will bring quiet to her racing mind. Instead, she finds a place brimming with eccentricity and curiosity, and people who seem to see straight through her carefully controlled facade.

Murray has returned to his hometown with a broken heart and his tail between his legs. Volunteering at the family-run repair shop is meant to be temporary... until a chance encounter starts to crack his emotional armour.

Meanwhile, mountain ranger Finlay lives for solitude and the wild and rugged scenery. But when a broken compass draws him reluctantly into town life, he finds himself pulled not just into a community project, but into the kind of tangled feelings he’s spent a lifetime avoiding.

As a new garden is built and winter weather rages, lives will be patched, polished and set on entirely new courses. Can these lonely hearts be mended, and finally find happiness and love?

I'm really starting to feel right at home in Cairns Dhu and the Highway Repair Shop.  It's such a wonderful Scottish setting and I am really enjoying getting to know all of the characters. 

The focus this time is on Alice who is new to town, and is the new doctor, she has only just qualified and she seems to be struggling with her mental health a bit, while trying to keep that hidden. 

Alice is hoping that a quieter pace to life than from the big city is just what she needs, but isn't expecting to be taken into the hearts of the whole community so fast. 

We also get to know Finlay the rather standoffish ranger a whole lot better and he intrigued me a lot.  As did Murray who we met briefly in the previous book. 

I enjoyed getting to see a variety of repairs in the repair shop, as well as how the shop and community continues to mend hearts. 

What I really adored was a friendship growing between Shell and Jolyon, two of the children in this book, both with their own problems, but the way they treat each other is just so heart meltingly adorable that I would love to see more from both of them. 

There is even a rescued family of dogs to root for in this, that I would have loved for myself. 

I am loving this series a lot and already can't wait to read the next book.  

Thank you to Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.