The Shucker’s Booktique

Willa assumes proprietorship of her aunt’s bookstore in Lobster Cove. On a stormy night, the mysterious Lon Devlin bangs on her door. He’s looking for her Aunt Jenny, but so are Willa and the police. Licking her emotional wounds from a broken engagement, Willa is ordered to run the bookstore by her greedy mother. She’s a dishrag, bending to everyone else’s needs until she allows Lon to enter her doorway. There’s a spark between them - the supernatural kind.  

Cinderella meets water sprite in this contemporary fairytale! The title is wonderful, the premise of the plot seriously enticing. Lon’s character is rugged and robust, although a female voice slips into his dialogue. Willa is an emotional mop with too many lines begging the reader to feel sorry for her. Odd prose pops up too often. “In the distance, the eerie, low moan of a foghorn announced a ship coming home.” Foghorns don’t announce ships. Foghorns are automated or manually activated when visibility is reduced by fog. It’s imperative for an author to do her research. The melodrama is thick as fog, but cutting through it with a knife won’t help weak writing and grammatical errors. Why would talking to a tree leave Willa’s muscles aching from the effort? Doesn’t make sense. Or, “Lon stood exactly as he had before, as if only his mouth moved,” pulls a reader from the story.

“The Shucker’s Booktique” has a cliff-hanger ending. If more attention to the craft of writing is applied, there’s a fun future in store for this series.

Sloane Austen