Between the Pages

Another audiobook (and possibly the first one I was tempted to give up on, which gives you a clue as to how this review might go!) The story revolves around Della, whose mother Kitty passes away at the beginning of the book, and Della ends up inheriting itty’s vast collection of cookbooks. She decides to open a bookshop selling just second-hand cookbooks, despite her husband Mark and her brother Jeff telling her it won’t work. As odious as both of these male characters turned out to be, it pained me to agree with them. She wanted to open the shop in a sleepy little village, selling exclusively second hand cookbooks, with the focus more on socialising than buying. I’m not a genius but it doesn’t need one to know that in real life, this is a business model destined to fail.

Although the title would suggest that the book is mainly about the bookshop, it’s actually mainly about Della’s personal life. She has a husband who is quite frankly awful, and a brother who is so supercilious that I dare any reader not to want to give him a slap. The only decent member of her family was her daughter Sophie, who was intelligent and independent despite having a doormat and a lying know-it-all cheat as parents.

Della also discovers some secrets in her own past, which were the best parts of the book, by virtue of the fact that they were more tolerable to read about than the rest. Naturally the bookshop itself is a roaring success, and of course Della finds happiness, because she finds another man to love her and loses weight.

The narration by Gabrielle Glaister was fine, despite some huge pauses in-between paragraphs and chapters, which made me wonder if I had accidentally pressed pause on the playback, but I would be happy to listen to another audiobook with this narrator (although not by this author).

I have looked at other reviews of this book, and they are largely extremely positive, so if this is the sort of book that appeals to you, don’t let my review put me off. I think I probably picked a book in a genre that just doesn’t appeal to me, but at least I now know what kind of thing to avoid!