Monday 25 July 2016

Book Review - The Bookshop on Rosemary Lane by Ellen Berry

Amazon UK
Title: The Bookshop on Rosemary Lane
Author: Ellen Berry
Format reviewed: Ebook
Source: Netgalley
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: 14th July 2016 
Rating: 3 Stars


**Take a trip to the Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge, where a very special little cookbook shop is about to open its doors…**

In the beginning…

Kitty Cartwright has always solved her problems in the kitchen. Her cookbooks are her life, and there isn’t an issue that ‘Cooking with Aspic’ can’t fix. Her only wish is that she had a book entitled ‘Rustling Up Dinner When Your Husband Has Left You’.

Forty years later…

On Rosemary Lane, Della Cartwright plans to open a very special little bookshop. Not knowing what to do with the hundreds of cookbooks her mother left her, she now wants to share their recipes with the world – and no amount of aspic will stand in her way.

But with her family convinced it’s a hare-brained scheme, Della starts to wonder if she’s made a terrible decision. One thing’s for sure: she’s about to find out…

I've got mixed feeling about this book, I think due to the sheer quantity of "shop" books that have been released in instant years, I was expecting a certain feel to the story, or at least that I would get to know a shop very well. I was aware this was to be a cookbook shop and I was intrigued by the idea, but yet it seemed to take forever for the story to get onto the shop at all, almost as though it was an afterthought to what the main story was, which felt more like Della's marriage. 

I thought there were large hugely predictable sections of the book, where I could see exactly what was going to happen a mile off, and I found I just didn't really connect to large amounts of the characters. My favourite character was probably Della's daughter Sophie, and due to her leaving home to go to uni, we don't even see much of a lovely young woman. 

There were some enjoyable sections, but mainly I spent the book wanting to throw something at Della for being just so naive about life, her marriage and just how to set up a new business. I also wanted to shake Della for her choice of husband, I really didn't take to Mark, nor her brother Jeff. They both seem to belittle Della without any reason. 

Overall although there was glimpses of a good book, I found it just wasn't working fully for me, I quite liked it on the whole, but I would have loved more about the shop, more cooking, more food descriptions etc.. basically the bits I would have expected. 

Thank you to Avon & Netgalley for this review copy. This was my honest opinion. 

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