Prompt: A book where the main character works at your current or dream job

This was one prompt that I hadn’t even though about choosing a book for yet and then Twitter chose it for me. Bookouture shared a pic of a new book by Merryn Allingham, The Bookshop Murder. The main character is Flora Steele, a trained librarian who has inherited a village bookshop and finds herself solving crime in the 1950s. That is absolutely my dream job!

What it’s about?

From Goodreads

Bookshop owner Flora Steele escapes the sleepy English village of Abbeymead through the adventures in the stories she sells. Until one morning, everything changes when she discovers a body amongst her own bookshelves…

The young man with the shock of white-blond hair lay spread-eagled on the floor, surrounded by fallen books. His hand reached out to the scattered pages, as though he was trying to tell her something.

But who is he? How did he come to be killed in Flora’s ordinary little bookshop? Flora finds out he was staying at the Priory Hotel, and when the gardener suddenly dies in its beautiful grounds only a few days later, she is certain that something untoward is happening in her quiet village by the sea.

But are the two deaths connected? And is someone at the hotel responsible – the nervous cook, the money-obsessed receptionist, or the formidable manageress?

Determined to save her beloved bookshop’s reputation and solve the murder mystery, Flora enlists the help of handsome and brooding Jack Carrington: crime writer, recluse and her most reliable customer.

As the unlikely duo set about investigating the baffling case, guilty faces greet them at every door. And they soon realise there’s more than one person hiding secrets in Abbeymead…

What I think:

This is the first book in a new cosy mystery and I will definitely be buying the next one.

Flora is intelligent and observant. Well-liked intelligent the village of Abbeymead, she is running a bookshop she has inherited from her aunt. The bookshop barely makes a profit and Flora’s dreams if travelling around Europe have been put on hold.

There’s little excitement in her life until one morning she finds a dead body in the bookshop. She finds an unlikely crime fighting partner in reclusive writer, Jack Carrington.

There is a lot of humour in this book – Flora is witty and charming and wins Jack over. There is a definitely a spark if attraction between them and it will be intersection to see how it develops.

The mystery that unfolds is clever and well-paced to keep the reader interested with a satisfying conclusion.

The writer also sets up the potential for further mysteries as Jack begins researching new a new crime series that will take him traveling around the country.

I’m so glad Twitter made me buy this book! And I can’t wait to see what happens with the characters in the future.

If you like cosy mysteries with a vintage twist then I recommend you give Flora Steele a try.