Dunoon is a town in Scotland, on the Cowal peninsula, in the south of Argyll and Bute. You can reach the town by land or by sea, but despite its history and recently renovated appearance, the town, like most towns today, suffers from a number of empty retail premises. However, not everything is gone, and some shops seem to be surviving the throes of The Covid Pandemic, Brexit, The Cost Of Living Crisis, and Government Incompetence. One of these shops is a charming independent bookshop called Bookpoint.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Dunoon visiting relatives and I had the opportunity to go to Bookpoint. The shop sits on a corner and has a beautiful, curved frontage with big windows. Inside the books are all displayed on the ground floor and stretch towards the back of the shop; upstairs is a room filled with unique gifts for sale from socks to pottery. Amongst the books on the ground floor, the shop also sells stationary, pens, jewellery and Scottish themed gifts. It didn’t take long for me to be completely engrossed by the shelves, browsing through Scottish folklore, popular fiction, and then making my way to the back where the young adult and children’s books are kept.
I bought a couple of gifts as Christmas presents for family and friends, but the book that caught my eye was Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer…
The blurb on the back reads as follows:
Echo Alkaev’s world falls apart when her father mysteriously disappears. She finds him half-frozen in the winter forest, guarded by a strange talking wolf who proposes a bargain: Echo will live for a year in his house to save her father’s life.
In the wolf’s enchanted house, something dark and strange lies behind every door. Echo discovers a magical library full of books-turned-mirrors, and a young man named Hal who is trapped inside of them. She must solve the mystery of the wolf’s enchantment before her year is up, otherwise Echo, the wolf and Hal will be lost forever.
The blurb gave me fairytale, Beauty and The Beast vibes, and is described by author Elizabeth Lim as ‘A ravishing new fairytale woven of music, enchantment and mystery’. I love reading new spins on fairytales and folklore, and I love anything that is a bit quirky or different. Echo North looks promising. I’m sure I could have easily bought more books from Bookpoint, but I had to be restrained for my bank balance’s sake and because I have a massive to-be-read pile. Once I have read Echo North I will post a review on this blog.
If you want to find out more about Bookpoint click here.