THE LITTLE SHOP OF FOUND THINGS by Paula Brackston

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Little Shop of Found Things is a charming and magical read that I immensely enjoyed.  While it is a story based on time travel, it is not at all sci-fi.  Some have compared it to Outlander and while I never read the books and only saw a little of the TV series, I can assure you that The Little Shop of Found Things does not contain the muskets, guns and sexual violence found I’m Outlander but does have the romance.

This book drew me right in with the opening sentence and held my attention until the last page:

It is a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps in an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room.

Xanthe Westlake has a special talent— the ability to touch an object and learn about a person or event. As such, she is in the perfect business — she and her mother Flora have just bought a quaint antique shop that they plan to rejuvenate and restore. What they didn’t know is that their purchase included a ghost who is determined that her daughter’s wrongful death in the seventeenth century, be averted by changing history.  It is up to Xanthe, by using an antique silver chatelaine, which allows her to travel back in time, to right this wrong or else, as the ghost informs her, harm will come to her mother Flora.

I enjoyed reading this book and found Xanthe to be a genuine and likable protagonist.  I particularly relished her adventures in the seventeenth century because the descriptions of the places as well as the explanations of the norms and etiquette were fascinating.  Due to Brackston’s writing skills, I really felt as if I had been transported back in time along with Xanthe. The adventure and mystery element kept me turning page after page, unable to put the book down.

The writing is excellent and the pacing is perfect — I never felt bored. The language spoken in the seventeenth century is markedly different from present day and the reader will find it authentic. Brackston has a talent for clever writing and winsome analogies.

Willis was a man of few words, and not given to taking them out for an airing often, but they passed the miles companionably enough.

She held hope to her breast like a tiny bird which must be grasped tightly yet with such care, lest one crush it to nothing through fear of losing it. Hope was all she had.

I am very excited that there will be another book in the series but worry how I will wait because I want to read it now! I would really like to see Xanthe returning to the same time period but could understand if a new adventure takes her elsewhere. This is the first book I have read by Paula Brackston and because I loved it so much, I plan to read more of her books as soon as possible.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

THE PERFECT COUPLE by Elin Hilderbrand

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Perfect Couple is a light, fun and entertaining beach read. While it is billed as a murder mystery, I found it light on the mystery element but after all, it is intended as a book for the beach! The couple that appears to be perfect, Celeste and Benji, are about to be married at his parents’ palatial Nantucket home. But on the morning of the wedding, Celeste’s best friend, who is also the maid of honor, is found floating in the water at the beach in the backyard, where the reception is to be held.  The rest of the book deals with finding out the who in whodunit.

As we go on the journey, we learn that most of the people interviewed by the police, as well as the deceased, has a big secret. It sure is a lot of secrets. For me, learning these secrets was the most intriguing aspect of the book rather than the mystery. As soon as one secret is revealed, we learn of another one.

The characters are sufficiently developed for the reader to understand their motivations.  The story’s pacing was fine and it is a fairly fast read. Just like the one other Hilderbrand book I have read, it feels like you have visited Nantucket for a few summer days when you read this book.  Hilderbrand excels at defining and exploring the setting of Nantucket and perhaps that is because she lives there.  Don’t they say, write about what you know?

The chapters’ titles are dates and the narrative, as it is told in these pages, is not linear. On a few occasions, I found myself looking back at the table of contents to see where a particular chapter fit in the chronology. But this minor issue was not enough to detract at all from my enjoyment of the book.

There are a few particularly amusing moments in The Perfect Couple. About one-fourth of the way in, the groom’s mother Greer, laments that her 21st book has been found to be unacceptable by her editor’s new boss. I couldn’t help but think this relates to The Perfect Couple but you will have to read it to find out:

If she is very honest with herself, she will admit that the novel did feel a bit thin on plot, a bit slapdash, a bit “phoned in,” as it were. The key to a good whodunit is a murderer who is hiding in plain sight. Her character with the newly acquired stutter is, perhaps, underdeveloped.