One More Chapter
Featuring: Linda Carlucci; Dexter Grayling; Elle Cassidy
343 pages ISBN: 0008595186 EAN: 9780008595180 Kindle: B0B9SK1DHM e-Book Add to Wish List
Fir Haven is a cheerful small town in Scotland, enjoying the benefits of broadband and with a strong sense of community. Elle Cassidy decides to convert the family newsagent and sweet shop she inherited into a stationer’s and gift shop, in A SCOTTISH COUNTRY ESCAPE. She’s no sooner opened than a mysterious curse and a threat to the town’s nature reserve change her quiet life.
Crime writer Dexter Grayling has moved to town, looking for a quiet scenic location to inspire his writing. He makes a dramatic entrance, always in a hurry with his sports car, and narrowly misses knocking down Elle and a senior citizen. Possibly coincidentally, he is then afflicted by writer’s block. Rumour has it that the senior lady, Linda Carlucci, can cast a curse. Dexter, who previously didn’t pass the time of day with anyone, becomes increasingly desperate to save his occupation and income. He asks Elle for help.
By now Elle is more concerned with saving a nature reserve in the Scottish Highlands from sale for private development, and she tries to involve others in this task – even Dexter, since he’s hanging around. Elle Cassidy is the one person who remains unimpressed by Dexter, so they get to know each other as equals. Elle talks matters over regularly with her grandmother Clara, and her good friends who help staff the shop. Linda Carlucci seemingly does not wish to be found.
I like the way that the layered secrets of the past generation come to light one by one throughout Julie Shackman's A SCOTTISH COUNTRY ESCAPE. Because this is a romance, more emphasis is placed on Elle and Dexter’s relationship rather than other plotlines. For example, to save a nature reserve, I would have recommended getting a biodiversity study carried out by a college, as land hosting threatened species probably could not be disturbed, or not without such expense as to be unviable. Nobody mentions this kind of necessary action. The town does show solidarity, but in what I found to be a formulaic way of organising a protest and street festival.
Summer in rural Scotland comes across as sunny and rainy by turns, at the whim of the weather but scenic and cheerful. People want to help others but they are not too nosy, they don’t depend on gossip for entertainment. I’m all for a heroine with the right attitudes to conserving the environment and running a business. A SCOTTISH COUNTRY ESCAPE is the fourth book in the Scottish Escapes series by Julie Shackman, the second I have read, and I would love to return to Fir Haven in the future.
Escape to the Scottish Highlands with a brand new spring romance from bestselling author, Julie Shackman
Determined to overcome a family tragedy, Elle Cassidy decides to reopen her late mother’s ailing newsagent as a stationery shop in the quiet Scottish town of Fir Haven.
But when the arrogant yet handsome crime writer Dexter Grayling almost runs over Elle in his beast of a sports car, the town is thrown into a tailspin – especially when Dexter claims that local resident Linda Carlucci has put a curse on him and he is no longer able to write.
Can Elle put aside her dislike for the self-absorbed writer and help Dexter uncover what is really going on with the Carlucci family? And in the process will Elle realise that there’s a lot more to her beloved Fir Haven than she first thought…
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