May 9th, 2025
Home | Log in!

On Top Shelf
THE CHRISTMAS PACTTHE CHRISTMAS PACT
Fresh Pick
THE GREEK HOUSE
THE GREEK HOUSE

New Books This Week

Reader Games


The books of May are here—fresh, fierce, and full of feels.

Slideshow image


Since your web browser does not support JavaScript, here is a non-JavaScript version of the image slideshow:

slideshow image
Wedding season includes searching for a missing bride�and a killer . . .


slideshow image
Sometimes the path forward begins with a step back.


slideshow image
One island. Three generations. A summer that changes everything.


slideshow image
A snapshot made them legends. What it didn�t show could tear them apart.


slideshow image
This life coach will give you a lift!


slideshow image
A twisty, "addictive," mystery about jealousy and bad intentions


slideshow image
Trapped by magic, haunted by muses�she must master the cards before they�re lost to darkness.


slideshow image
Masquerades, secrets, and a forbidden romance stitched into every seam.


slideshow image
A vanished manuscript. A murdered expert. A castle full of secrets�and one sharp-witted sleuth.


Since your web browser does not support JavaScript, here is a non-JavaScript version of the image slideshow:

slideshow image
Two warrior angels. First friends, now lovers. Their future? A WILD UNKNOWN.


A Scottish Country Escape

A Scottish Country Escape, March 2023
Scottish Escapes 4
by Julie Shackman

One More Chapter
Featuring: Linda Carlucci; Dexter Grayling; Elle Cassidy
343 pages
ISBN: 0008595186
EAN: 9780008595180
Kindle: B0B9SK1DHM
e-Book
Add to Wish List


Purchase



"A crime writer under a curse asks a shopkeeper for help"

Fresh Fiction Review

A Scottish Country Escape
Julie Shackman

Reviewed by Clare O'Beara
Posted March 21, 2023

Romance Small Town

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.

Learn more about A Scottish Country Escape

SUMMARY

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…


What do you think about this review?

Comments

No comments posted.

Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!

 

 

 

© 2003-2025 off-the-edge.net  all rights reserved Privacy Policy