Lexie Dunbar expects promotion in the Glasgow publishing firm, Literati. The managers think otherwise. Maybe they think someone good with authors shouldn’t be promoted away from them. Maybe they don’t want to show favouritism. Someone in another publishing house has found the only way to progress is by moving firm, and she’ll bring new contacts. Poor Lexie is devastated and instead of moving firm herself, takes a three-month break in the latest Scottish Escapes romance story.

THE BOOKSHOP BY THE LOCH where Lexie spent time as a child, is closing down. Book Ends sits in the heart of the town of Bracken Way but Trevor Newman, who has run this all his life, is losing heart and losing custom. It seems likely the space will become an art gallery. Lexie tries to encourage Trevor to innovate and redecorate, and predictably he offers her a manager’s job to see if she can turn the shop around. At first, this is too far out of her comfort zone, but gradually Lexie decides to give it a go. 

Tobias Black, the artist nephew of Trevor, who wanted the space, isn’t best pleased but takes over half the space anyway. Hackles are raised for some time, but Lexie just has to put up with it and get work done. Family conflicts and dramas are running through the story – at least three of them, and I could have done with fewer as we don’t want to be dragged from one to the next on the next page. Niall Dunbar, Lexie’s father, left the family years ago to be an international journalist, and her mother Maisie never got over it - they divorced. Lexie’s initially living with her mother and grandfather Gerald Foyle, nice Scots characters in this highlands town. Rhiannon, her best friend in Glasgow, calls and visits a few times, hoping to tempt her back to the city.