Molly Kimball is losing her librarian job doe to budget cuts, and she’s looking for her next chapter. Her mother is a published poet, but she’s been struggling to find inspiration since Molly’s dad died. So when she gets a letter from her aunt in Cambridge, England, asking for help with the family bookshop, she and Molly decide to leave their Vermont farmhouse and head to England. After only a couple of weeks, they arrive in England and find their way to Thomas Marlowe—Manuscripts and Folios.
The bookshop is over 400 years old and has been in the family for generations, but now Molly’s Great Aunt Violet is struggling to keep the lights on. Her cousin Clive is already shopping the bookstore’s location to the chain Best Books, mush to Violet’s chagrin. But as soon as Molly and her mother get settled in, they have ideas on how to bump up sales. Molly has ideas for getting them on social media and creating a website for the store, and her mother offers Violet some money, to bring her loan with Clive current and keep Best Books at bay for a while longer.
But best of all, Molly finds out that among Violet’s group of college friends is Persephone Brightwell, one of the finest poets in England, and Molly wants her great aunt to ask her friend to do a reading at the store during the upcoming Cambridge Literary Festival. With help from some friends, they are able to set up a room for the reading, and Molly gets lots of good photos for social media at the event. Overall it’s a big success, until Molly finds herself in the back garden, chasing after a stray cat and almost stumbling over a dead body.
The woman in the garden is Myrtle, a cousin and a part of Violet’s friends group from her time at college. But the pink knitting needle that had been used to stab her was definitely Violet’s, and Molly is concerned that the police will think that Violet killed Myrtle. Molly and her new friends decide they need to investigate, to prove Violet innocent, while they’re also working to keep the bookshop in friendly hands.
Take an American new to Cambridge, add a new best friend from the local coffee shop, a couple of handsome young men from the bike rental place (one of whom is the son of a Lord), an ex-MI6 agent who runs a bookshop specializing in military thrillers, some sketchy cousins, a group of college friends with secrets, a couple of shop cats, and the breathtaking backdrop of Trinity College, and you have Chapter and Curse.
This is the first in a new series, and Elizabeth Penney has crafted a story where the setting is like another character. Setting the story in Cambridge, in a 400-year-old bookshop in a city with so much literary heritage adds depth and gravitas to the mystery. The characters of Molly, her mother Nina, and her aunt Violet are charming, and the blooming romance adds much sweetness.
I liked Chapter and Curse. I love the setting of Cambridge and the bookshop. I liked the crime and the investigation. I did feel like some of the scenes with Molly were a little overly sweet, a little saccharine, for a character of her age. I think that she’ll probably grow into her role in the books a little better as the series goes on, so I see a lot of potential for the Cambridge Bookshop series, and I look forward to reading more of these to see the journey the author and the character take together.
Egalleys for Chapter and Curse were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.
