Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop

1.5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

I'm going to give myself a fair amount of blame for not connecting with this one, I didn't realize it was a sequel to The Christmas Bookshop (my brain must have made the word sequel into series). I would say you absolutely have to read the first before starting this one, otherwise you'll feel as bewildered as I was reading it.

She had lost Oke. And soon, she was going to lose her home.

If you did read the first, you'll have already been introduced to these characters and all their relationships, family and friends that work on Victoria Street in Edinburgh. This starts off with Carmen still dating Oke (Obedience), her Quaker boyfriend from Brazil and going a little crazy that he doesn't want to have sex with her. This leads her to set-up a seduction that goes very badly and they end up breaking up, right when Oke gets the opportunity to go to the Amazon for a six months expedition. There's anger but also a little regret by Carmen at how she handled things while Oke also regrets his rejection but sees Carmen's anger and doesn't want to force his attention on her as he thinks she is firmly done with him. So, Oke takes off to the Amazon but not quite a full stage exit as we get povs from him as he battles his mother trying to set him up with a family friend and then a horrible case of malaria. Back in Edinburgh, Carmen's sister that she is staying with is going back to work and hiring a nanny, so Carmen needs to leave and find her own place to stay while also trying to keep her job and the bookshop she works at open and out of the clutches of the dastardly millionaire trying to buy up all the businesses on the street and turn them into cheesy survivor shops.

And there was comfort in that, too: Make all your choices as well as you can; that is all you can do.

One of the things that kind of threw me, was the numerous povs, even the family friend of Oke, Mary, is given a pov. The pov changes bleed into each other at times and that gave the story kind of a chaotic feel, even with Carmen the central character, this felt like a story of no one and everyone. There's dabbling into Carmen's sister Sofia and her stress at going back to work and her husband firmly on board with getting Carmen out, Carmen's boss Mr. McCredie wanting to go on an expedition to Antarctica at seventy-nine years old, and of course, Carmen trying to figure out her feelings on Oke, where to live, and how to keep the bookshop open. It's all dabbling though, and then we get numerous time jumps, the book takes place from summer to winter, and it all made for a story and characters that I never felt like I could get a solid grasp on.

She was hungering for physical contact. Nobody touched her. She missed that. She had missed the very simplicity of being touched. She had been so lonely; so cold.

The latter second half has Carmen leaving a phone message for Oke stating her feelings and readers see Oke telling his mother and Mary to contact Carmen and tell her he has malaria but with some schadenfreude, Oke and Carmen never learn what the other has to say. This leads to Carmen looking for love again and an almost bedroom scene with Rudi, Sofia's new nanny (Rudi was my favorite character and the one who brought the sweet, lightness, and heart that I want in holiday reads). It also led to a brief dark moment between Carmen and Sofia but that gets resolved fairly quickly. Carmen finds a way to save the store, get Mr. McCredie on his expedition, and see a new side to her Scrooge (shop buying millionaire) to give this a Christmas miracle ending. To really tie a bow on it, Oke comes back right before the end (they come face-to-face with about five percent left in book) and they get their happily for now. The ending felt really abrupt but there was happiness and a feeling of Carmen, seemingly, having figured it all out. If you read the first and want more of your favorite characters, you'd probably enjoy this but definitely don't try and just jump in here.