Tag Archive | Rebecca Raisin

Aria’s Travelling Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin

Serenely Beautiful

Aria’s Travelling Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin is the most delightful contemporary novel that I absolutely adored. It is the second book in The Travelling Shops series but can be read as a stand-alone.

This is a book about love, and grief, and life. It is a book about friendship, and travelling, and reading. It is a book that will completely take over your life for a few hours as you never want it to end.

We join the lead characters who live out of their camper vans, selling various items. The leading lady sells books and is passionate about them. She is incredibly easy to empathise with, with her love of reading, of browsing bookshops, and of sniffing books (who hasn’t?)

The reader follows the characters from busy London to the sunny, carefree South of France in Summer. We can almost ‘feel’ the heat, ‘see’ the landscape, and imagine the local food and wine.

Grief is a journey. “It’s a process… And the only way to get through it is to keep moving forward… But you can’t outrun grief.” Each person has to navigate grief in the best way they can. “I feel so robbed and bitter at the world. I try so hard not to fall down that dark hole but sometimes it just swallows me up.” Grief brings out many emotions – including guilt. Guilt at being alive and learning to live again. “Stop letting guilt drive you.” Guilt is a negative emotion and we need to cast it out.

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The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin

Purrfectly Charming

The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin is a most delightful contemporary novel that will warm your heart.

Following the death of her mother, a daughter is searching for her roots after a discovery of decades old letters. For all her life, it had been enough just being with her mother. Now she wants to seek out her father.

We see the importance of family. Family does not have to be blood related. The mother and daughter had spent their lives living with other women in a commune. “Women who will always strive to lift me up and love me. Help me when I fall.” These women were family.

Travelling to many places meant there is no one place to call home. But perhaps home was never meant to be bricks and mortar, maybe home is meant to be flesh and blood.

Sometimes when we are hurt, we build walls. “My walls are built high so that no one can ever leave me again.” Walls we build to protect can actually imprison us. Demolish the walls and begin to really live.

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A Gingerbread Cafe Christmas by Rebecca Raisin

Warm And Welcoming

A Gingerbread Café Christmas by Rebecca Raisin is a delightful contemporary festive offering of three stories.

Christmas At The Gingerbread Café by Rebecca Raisin is the first book in the Gingerbread Café series and is absolutely delightful. It is a gentle novella about friendship and love during the festive season. We see that we achieve more when we work in partnership rather than viewing others as competition or rivals. All the characters are warm and welcoming. This is Christmas wrapped up in a tale.

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Rosie’s Travelling Tea Shop by Rebecca Raisin

A Match Made In Heaven

Rosie’s Travelling Tea Shop by Rebecca Raisin is a delightfully fun contemporary read that will warm your heart and soul. It will make you laugh and it will leave you smiling.

Rebecca Raisin has created a wonderful set of eclectic characters – an obsessive at cleaning chef, a broken hearted bibliophile and a big burly tattooed vegan – together they travel the length and breadth of Britain in their respective camper vans. They go to various festivals, delighting the reader. Along the way they meet others who are equally entertaining.

The reader does not so much read this book as ‘travel’ through it, sampling the sights and sounds along the way.

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