Today it's my pleasure to be kicking off the blog tour for Jackie Fraser's debut novel The Bookshop of Second Chances by sharing an extract from Chapter One.
Thea’s having a bad month. Not only has she been made redundant, she’s also discovered her husband of nearly twenty years is sleeping with one of her friends. And he’s not sorry – he’s leaving.
Bewildered and lost, Thea doesn’t know what to do. But, when she learns the great-uncle she barely knew has died and left her his huge collection of second-hand books and a house in the Scottish Lowlands, she seems to have been offered a second chance.
Running away to a little town where no one knows her seems like exactly what Thea needs. But when she meets the aristocratic Maltravers brothers – grumpy bookshop owner Edward and his estranged brother Charles, Lord Hollinshaw – her new life quickly becomes just as complicated as the life she was running from...
I can’t look at him, or not full on. I keep glancing sideways at him, just catching glimpses. Our eyes never meet.
‘Yes. It’s all right. Or no, it isn’t, it’s . . . but I know you didn’t exactly do it on purpose.’
‘No. I really didn’t.’ He looks knackered, almost as bad as I feel.
‘Anyway, I’d better go.’
He nods, and then says, ‘Oh, wait. There’s a letter.’
‘A letter?’
‘It only came yesterday. I thought, as I was going to see you . . . Hang on,’ he says, and disappears for a moment into the study. ‘Here. A solicitor’s letter, I think. Have you—’
‘Not my solicitors,’ I say, taking the envelope from him. I hesitate and then tear it open, rapidly scanning the contents. ‘Oh, weird.’
‘What is it?’ says Xanthe.
‘It’s Uncle Andrew.’ I look at Chris. ‘Great-uncle Andrew, I should say.’
‘The one who died?’
I nod. Great-uncle Andrew died last year. I didn’t go to the funeral; he lives – lived – in Scotland, and I’d only met him a few times. My grandfather’s eldest brother, he’d outlived Grandad by a good fifteen years and made it to ninety-three.
‘And?’
‘He’s left me his house,’ I say, rather stunned.
