Review of The Vintage Bookshop of Memories by Elizabeth Holland

I have I have just finished reading The Vintage Bookshop of Memories by ElizabethHolland, an enjoyable and intriguing novel which I would highly recommend.
A young woman, Prue Clemonte, returns to her native village of Ivy Hatch for her grandmother`s funeral. Here she meets not only the hostility of locals, still harboring resentments of the past, but also the complex and incomplete web of her own memories and emotions; and the steps she takes to find out the truth of her own history are also steps she is taking to discover her own self-hood and identity. The Vintage Bookshop of Memories is both real - it is the charming but almost abandoned village bookshop left to Prue by her late mother – and a kind of metaphor for her quest. In renovating and reopening the bookshop, she begins to unlock the past and to prepare the way towards the future.
The book is also a love story, and the girl-meets-boy theme is skilfully handled, avoiding sentimentality and showing the layers of self-doubt, nervousness, misunderstanding and external opposition that often accompany the simple happiness of finding someone special.