Christmas At The Borrow A Bookshop
You guys - it's the last show of 2022! We were able to get one last book into the year - Kiley Dunbar's SPARKLING "Christmas at the Borrow A Bookshop"!
Eagle-eyed listeners will know we've covered this book's predecessor in Series 6, and this second installment in the series is JUST as gorgeous!
Topics covered include (but are not limited to):
We love that it's not a Hallmark movie Christmas story. That would have triggered us too hard
Jowan is a bad bitch and Saoirse absolutely would
Magnus and Alex falling in love at first sight and what that has to do with the unbearable lightness of being (oh we can get wanky if we want you guys)
Magnus triggering all our internalised misogyny by being a feminist ICON
The Pride & Prejudice insertion and a related argument over whether that is better content than the time BTS's Jungkook's jacket couldn't withstand his pecs
The romance of someone taking responsibility for themselves for the sake of the other person
Ben being the actual worst. Seriously, he is lucky he's not a real person. He would have caught these hands
The whole book is a death defying balance between high romance, sexy sexual tension, proper melodrama and some serious old school action - anchored in people being human and understanding that dramatic stuff is transient - being okay in yourself is the one thing we can work towards as a constant. And we are HERE FOR IT
Plus, it wouldn't have been an episode without some tangents right? We found ourselves talking, for some reason, about:
How we're freezing
Chloe's stance on bobble hats
BTS's Jin going into the military and the weirdly biased Wikipedia page about women in the Korean military
What is quite possibly our very first masturbation joke ever (how did we make it this long?
Katie's mam makes her own mince pies. No one is surprised.
Though all her adorableness is harnessed at this time of the year to help the St Vincent de Paul Christmas appeal and we encourage our listeners to support similar organisations if they're in the position to do so :)
It's all here in this week's Chick Lit 4 Life!
Catch the full episode
More on Christmas At The Borrow A Bookshop: With just two weeks until Christmas, everything in Clove Lore should be perfect. But the latest holidaymaker to the Borrow a Bookshop is feeling far from festive…
Icelandic ex-bookseller Magnús Sturluson might be surrounded by love stories in the Bookshop, but he’s nursing a sadness that not even fiction can fix.
When Alexandra Robinson finds herself stranded in Clove Lore, she finds a safe place to hide from heartbreak. After all, all that’s waiting for her at home is a cheater boyfriend and the memories of her parents. As Alex finds herself embraced by the quirky village community, she finds her tough exterior thawing – and as she grows closer to Magnús, she finds an equally soft heart under his gruff shell.
It seems that Clove Lore is working its magic once again – until a great flood on Christmas Eve brings devastation in its wake. It’s up to Magnús and Alex to batten down the hatches and help bring the village back together again, while also introducing the locals to the Icelandic tradition of the jólabókaflóð – Yule book flood – where families and friends gather on Christmas Eve to exchange books and read together.
But can Magnús and Alex truly rescue the ruins of the village, and salvage their Christmas spirit? Or is there another complication lurking even closer than they thought?
More on Kiley Dunbar: Our girl Kiley Dunbar is a Scottish, working class author of romantic fiction. She has two kids, one Bedlington and lives in England with her husband of twenty two years.
In 2019 her debut novel, One Summer’s Night, was released by the fabulous Hera Books (and was a Joan Hessayon Award for New Writers finalist). She has published seven novels including the bestselling The Borrow a Bookshop Holiday. In 2021 her rom com One Winter’s Night was shortlisted for the RNA ‘Romantic Comedy Novel Award’ and Kiley won their flash fiction competition on the theme of ‘Protest’ in December 2021.
To find out more about Kiley Dunbar, visit