A Very Distant Shore: Quick Reads by Jenny Colgan

A Very Distant Shore: Quick Reads by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wanted: doctor for small island. Must like boats, the seaside and having no hope of keeping a secret...

Lorna lives on the tiny Scottish island of Mure, a peaceful place where everyone helps their neighbour. But the local GP is retiring, and nobody wants his job. Mure is too small and too remote.

Far away, in a crowded camp, Saif is treating a little boy with a badly-cut hand. Saif is a refugee, but he's also a doctor: exactly what Mure needs.

Saif is welcome in Mure, but can he forget his past? Over one summer, Saif will find a place to call home, and Lorna's life will change forever.


I haven't had much time to read lately and was feeling like I was in a little reading slump. When I saw that 'Quick Reads' had released their new books for the year, I couldn't wait to get my hands on them. I decided to pick up this one by Jenny Colgan.

I have read a few Jenny Colgan books and I have always really enjoyed them. This is a short story (145 pages) and I managed to read this in a few hours. I really enjoyed this story, it was different to others I have previously read, focusing on a Syrian refugee and a small town in Scotland.

I really got into this and couldn't believe how quick I was whizzing through it. I don't want to mention the story line as it is so short and would be worried about giving it away. Although I did really enjoy it and felt like I was in Lorna's world, I also did find that at the end of the book I had many unanswered questions and the book did feel very unfinished. I do believe that these characters will be featuring in Jenny Colgan's new book which is of full length, we get a sample of this at the end of story. I believe this though follows Lorna's best friend Flora, who we do meet in this book.

Personally I would have preferred to have this a little longer as I was enjoying it so much and felt it came to an abrupt ending. I also was a little shocked by the book as I didn't expect it to pan out in the way it did, I am hoping that in the full length novel Lorna is a prominent character as I am hoping to discover some of the answers to my questions. This short story is completely heartbreaking and it felt a lot longer than it actually was due to everything that happens in it.

THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER By Jenny Colgan blog tour and giveaway

THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER

By Jenny Colgan

William Morrow Paperbacks

September 20, 2016

ISBN: 9780062467256; $14.99

E-ISBN 9780062467263; $9.99



About the Book:

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more. Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.



Purchase Here: THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER – https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062467263/the-bookshop-on-the-corner



About the Author:

Jenny Colgan is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels, includingLittle Beach Street Bakery, Christmas at Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop, and Christmas at the Cupcake Café, all international bestsellers. Jenny is married with three children and lives in London and Scotland.



Connect with Jenny Colgan Website - http://www.jennycolgan.com/ 

Twitter – https://twitter.com/jennycolgan

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/jennycolganbooks

Praise for Jenny Colgan and THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER:

“Losing myself in Jenny Colgan’s beautiful pages is the most delicious, comforting, satisfying treat I have had in ages.”

— Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of Summer Secrets



“With a keen eye for the cinematic, Colgan (Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, 2016, etc.) is a deft mistress of romantic comedy; Nina's story is laced with clever dialogue and scenes set like jewels, just begging to be filmed. A charming, bracingly fresh happily-ever-after tale…”

— Kirkus


“This is a lovely novel with amazing characters who are hooked on books… at least some of them. The plot is believable and is a joy to read. The main female character, Nina, is the librarian who always figures out the best choice for a patron without fail. Jenny Colgan thinks outside the box and creates a memorable book.”

— RT Book Reviews

“This charming tale celebrates the many ways books bring people together”

— Booklist

“This light, fresh romantic comedy is the perfect escape for bibliophiles. Enjoy it with a cup of tea on a crisp day.”

— Real Simple

“[A] love story about reading and the joys books can bring to people’s lives.”

— All About Romance

Excerpt from THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER:

The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things. It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, whenever you’re going through something difficult, if someone could just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Don’t worry, it’s completely worth it. It seems like absolutely horrible crap now, but I promise it will all come good in the end,” and you

could say, “Thank you, Fairy Godmother.” You might also say, “Will I also lose that seven pounds?” and they would say, “But of course, my child!”

That would be useful, but it isn’t how it is, which is why we sometimes plow on too long with things that aren’t making us happy, or give up too quickly on something that might yet work itself out, and it is often difficult to tell precisely which is which.

A life lived forward can be a really irritating thing. So Nina thought, at any rate. Nina Redmond, twenty-nine, was telling herself not to cry in public. If you have ever tried giving yourself a good talking-to, you’ll know it doesn’t work terribly well. She was at work, for goodness’ sake. You weren’t meant to cry at work.

She wondered if anyone else ever did. Then she wondered if maybe everyone did, even Cathy Neeson, with her stiff too-blond hair, and her thin mouth and her spreadsheets, who was right at this moment standing in a corner, watching the room with folded arms and a grim expression, after delivering to the small team Nina was a member of a speech filled with jargon about how there were cutbacks all over, and Birmingham couldn’t afford to maintain all its libraries, and how austerity was something they just had to get used to.

Nina reckoned probably not. Some people just didn’t have a tear in them.

(What Nina didn’t know was that Cathy Neeson cried on the way to work, on the way home from work—after eight o’clock most nights—every time she laid someone off, every time she was asked to shave another few percent off an already skeleton budget, every time she was ordered to produce some new quality relevant paperwork, and every time her boss dumped a load of administrative work on her at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon on his way to a skiing vacation, of which he took many.

Eventually she ditched the entire thing and went and worked in a National Trust gift shop for a fifth of the salary and half the hours and none of the tears. But this story is not about Cathy Neeson.)

It was just, Nina thought, trying to squash down the lump in her throat . . . it was just that they had been such a little library.

Children’s story time Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Early closing Wednesday afternoon. A shabby old-fashioned building with tatty linoleum floors. A little musty sometimes, it was true. The big dripping radiators could take a while to get going of a morning and then would become instantly too warm, with a bit of a fug, particularly off old Charlie Evans, who came in to keep warm and read the Morning Star cover to cover, very slowly. She wondered where the Charlie Evanses of the world would go now.

Cathy Neeson had explained that they were going to compress the library services into the center of town, where they would become a “hub,” with a “multimedia experience zone” and a coffee shop and an “intersensory experience,” whatever that was, even though town was at least two bus trips too far for most of their elderly or strollered-up clientele.

Their lovely, tatty, old pitched-roof premises were being sold off to become executive apartments that would be well beyond the reach of a librarian’s salary. And Nina Redmond, twenty-nine, bookworm, with her long tangle of auburn hair, her pale skin with freckles dotted here and there, and a shyness that made her blush—or want to burst into tears—at the most inopportune moments, was, she got the feeling, going to be thrown out into the cold winds of a world that was getting a lot of unemployed librarians on the market at the same time.

“So,” Cathy Neeson had concluded, “you can pretty much get started on packing up the ‘books’ right away.”

She said “books” like it was a word she found distasteful in her shiny new vision of Mediatech Services. All those grubby, awkward books.



—



Nina dragged herself into the back room with a heavy heart and a slight redness around her eyes. Fortunately, everyone else looked more or less the same way. Old Rita O’Leary, who should probably have retired about a decade ago but was so kind to their clientele that everyone overlooked the fact that she couldn’t see the numbers on the Dewey Decimal System anymore and filed more or less at random, had burst into floods, and Nina had been able to cover up her own sadness comforting her.

“You know who else did this?” hissed her colleague Griffin through his straggly beard as she made her way through. Griffin was casting a wary look at Cathy Neeson, still out in the main area as he spoke. “The Nazis. They packed up all the books and threw them onto bonfires.”

“They’re not throwing them onto bonfires!” said Nina. “They’re not actually Nazis.”

“That’s what everyone thinks. Then before you know it, you’ve got Nazis.”

—

With breathtaking speed, there’d been a sale, of sorts, with most of their clientele leafing through old familiar favorites in the ten pence box and leaving the shinier, newer stock behind.

Now, as the days went on, they were meant to be packing up the rest of the books to ship them to the central library, but Griffin’s normally sullen face was looking even darker than usual. He had a long, unpleasantly scrawny beard, and a scornful attitude toward people who didn’t read the books he liked. As the only books he liked were obscure 1950s out-of-print stories about frustrated young men who drank too much in Fitzrovia, that gave him a lot of time to hone his attitude. He was still talking about book burners.

“They won’t get burned! They’ll go to the big place in town.”

Nina couldn’t bring herself to even say Mediatech.

Griffin snorted. “Have you seen the plans? Coffee, computers, DVDs, plants, admin offices, and people doing cost–benefit analysis and harassing the unemployed—sorry, running ‘mindfulness workshops.’ There isn’t room for a book in the whole damn place.” He gestured at the dozens of boxes. “This will be landfill. They’ll use it to make roads.”

“They won’t!”

“They will! That’s what they do with dead books, didn’t you know? Turn them into underlay for roads. So great big cars can roll over the top of centuries of thought and ideas and scholarship, metaphorically stamping a love of learning into the dust with their stupid big tires and blustering Top Gear idiots killing

the planet.”

“You’re not in the best of moods this morning, are you, Griffin?”

“Could you two hurry it along a bit over there?” said Cathy Neeson, bustling in, sounding anxious. They only had the budget for the collection trucks for one afternoon; if they didn’t manage to load everything up in time, she’d be in serious trouble.

“Yes, Commandant Über-Führer,” said Griffin under his breath as she bustled out again, her blond bob still rigid. “God, that woman is so evil it’s unbelievable.”

But Nina wasn’t listening. She was looking instead in despair at the thousands of volumes around her, so hopeful with their beautiful covers and optimistic blurbs. To condemn any of them to waste disposal seemed heartbreaking: these were books! To Nina it was like closing down an animal shelter. And there was no way they were going to get it all done today, no matter what Cathy Neeson thought.

Which was how, six hours later, when Nina’s Mini Metro pulled up in front of the front door of her tiny shared house, it was completely and utterly stuffed with volumes.

Enter the giveaway below. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Polly and the Puffin: 02 The Stormy Day by Jenny Colgan

Polly and the Puffin: 02 The Stormy Day by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Polly and Neil are back in the second gorgeous children's book from Sunday Times bestselling novelist Jenny Colgan. Perfect for reading aloud and including fun activities based on the story.

The boat masts jangled louder and louder. Above their heads, black clouds gathered. Polly shivered, and then the rain started to fall: plop, plop, plop.

Polly is waiting for something important to happen. But waiting is hard. It's even harder when it's raining and you can't go outside...

Can Polly find enough to do to keep busy ALL day? And what will happen when her puffin friend, Neil, decides to fly off into the storm?

When this copy arrived for me to share with my class I couldn't wait, they had previously loved 'Polly and the Puffin' and I knew this would be another they would enjoy.

Polly and Neil's adventure starts on a stormy day, Polly is waiting for her dad to come home, as he is out at sea and Neil disappears into the big black cloud.

I loved this story as well as the children, it is easy to read and the illustrations, although only a few colours come across as really powerful. I enjoyed reading about the village that Polly and Neil live in, this is something new, as before we only got snap shots of the dock.

The children were completely quiet during the story and they really took it in. They particularly liked the activities at the back of the book, which I think is unique and would love to see more of in other books. They all said they would recommend it to others and they enjoyed continuing on with the series. They have asked me if there will be another as they loved it so much, I really hope there will be!

What I like about the book as much as the children is that it is quite a nice book to pick up if you are just becoming an independent reader, the language isn't too challenging, however does offer a few words which could be used as discussion. It is also not an intimidating book for a child to read if they are not too confident.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.

Polly and the Puffin by Jenny Colgan

Polly and the Puffin by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Polly heard a CRASH downstairs. Was it a monster? NO! Was it a spider alien? NO!
It was a little puffin with a broken wing...

When Polly discovers an injured puffin, she and her mummy look after him in their cottage by the sea.

Slowly, Neil's wing heals and Polly must prepare herself to say goodbye to her new friend. Will she ever see him again?

Perfect for bedtime stories and early readers. From the author of The Little Beach Street Bakery.

Contains recipes, activities and jokes in addition to the story.

Jenny Colgan is well known for adult women's chick lit, when I realised she had written children's books I couldn't wait to give this ago.

This is a wonderful sweet story about a little girl, who finds a puffin which is injured. She takes it upon herself to try and save it. Taking it to the vet, feeding it and teaching it things, one day Neil (the puffin) has recovered and is ready to leave.

This is great story that shows the relationship between an animal and a child, one that teaches children to respect animals in the wild, and to care for them. Although some animals such as the puffin can never be a pet, the child can develop a friendship with it.

There are great illustrations in the story, the text is easy to follow and would be good for a young reader to read independently. Towards the end of the book, there are different fun sections, recipes, jokes and activities that children would also enjoy.

I am looking forward to the next in the series, I would also like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.

The Christmas Surprise by Jenny Colgan

The Christmas Surprise by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Rosie Hopkins, newly engaged, is looking forward to an exciting year in the little sweetshop she owns and runs. But when fate strikes Rosie and her boyfriend, Stephen, a terrible blow, threatening everything they hold dear, it's going to take all their strength and the support of their families and their Lipton friends to hold them together.

After all, don't they say it takes a village to raise a child?

Jenny Colgan has become a favourite for me; you know what you are going to get with her, a good storyline, good characters and a feel good factor and this novel lived up to all of those. If you have not read the others in the series it is of little importance as this could easily stand alone and Jenny does give a little update of where we are with Rosie at the start so it's easy to pick up where the previous novel left off.


There's no point in my retelling what happens and I'm not into 'spoilers' although it's not difficult to guess what will happen.


Yes it was predictable and easy to guess what was going to happen but somehow it didn't really spoil the book because the characters are so well developed and 'familiar' that the reader takes the journey with them confident that everything will always work out OK. It is a happy ever after kind of book but it is so charming, so full of descriptive narrative and realistic dialogue that you just want it all to work out for them.


All the characters from previous books are here, Lilian, Tina, the relationship between Rosie and Stephen and of course his haughty snobby mother and all the problems that come along with all the characters. We meet Pamela Stephen's sister and learn another aspect of this dysfunctional family and their dynamics which brings a welcome slant on this otherwise predictable novel.


I love Jenny Colgan's writing, in many ways she reminds me of the successful Sophie Kinsella in that she can laugh at and with her characters in such an entertaining way that reading her novels is so easy.


Breezed through this book, thoroughly enjoyable and although it was not entirely about Christmas it was a good seasonal read - definitely worth a 4 star rating.


I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.

West End Girls by Jenny Colgan

West End Girls by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The streets of London are paved with gold ... allegedly.

They may be twin sisters, but Lizzie and Penny Berry are complete opposites - Penny is blonde, thin and outrageous; Lizzie quiet, thoughtful and definitely not thin. The one trait they do share is a desire to DO something with their lives, and as far as they are concerned, the place to get noticed is London.

Out of the blue they discover they have a grandmother living in Chelsea - and when she has to go into hospital, they find themselves flat-sitting on the King's Road. But, as they discover, it's not as easy to become It Girls as they'd imagined, and west end boys aren't at all like Hugh Grant ...

I was looking for an audio book to keep me entertained on the way to work in the mornings and evenings. This I thought was perfect as full running time is around 3 hours. I thought that this would last me about a week, which it did.

Morwenna Banks, the narrator really brings the story to life, she gets into character very well and managed to keep think up throughout the novel.

Penny and Lizzie are twins and have lived in a council house for most of their lives. Suddenly their luck changes and they move to a large flat in Chelsea, which belongs to their grandmother. They have not seen her for years and she now lives in an old peoples home.

Although Penny and Lizzie are twins, they are very different. Lizzie is happy to have the quieter life, getting a job in a sandwich shop and working for George. From the moment I met George I knew he was going to be a great character and I loved reading about his and Lizzie's story.

Penny in contrast seems loud, pretends to be someone she's not and is always wanting to party. Penny soon finds out living in Chelsea and trying to be famous is not all that it is cracked up to be.

I did enjoy listening to this book, however it was not very taxing. I could and did guess the ending but this didn't bother me as I was only looking to be entertained. As others have said, this is not the best Colgan book and her latest ones are certainly much better. However if you are looking for light relief then this is for you. Just don't expect to get a deep and meaningful story line as you won't.