When I reviewed Alice Hoffman’s “The Bookstore Keepers” yesterday, I said the first in the series, “The Bookstore Sisters” was my favorite. But, Hoffman wrapped up The Once Upon a Time Bookshop series with the best, “The Bookstore Family”. This one made me cry twice, and the story is only forty-two pages long.

Sophie Gibson’s daughter, Violet, graduated from college, but had a difficult time telling her mother she wasn’t coming back to Brinkley’s Island, Maine, to run the family bookstore. Instead, she was going to follow her dream with a one-way ticket to Paris to become a patissier, a baker of pastries and cakes.

Five years later, Violet is a pastry chef, but she’s lonely. She’s never made friends. Because her father died, drowned at sea, Violet has closed off her heart to love. When her Aunt Isabel comes to visit, though, she spends every day at the Museum of Romantic Life, simply telling Violet that love is what’s important and it took Isabel a long time to realize that.

After Isabel goes back to Maine, Violet turns to the cafe at the museum. It’s there she meets Remy, the patissier who loves children’s books, as she does. For the first time, Violet pours out her heart and her story to someone else. But, before she can open her heart to love, Violet has to return home for her family.

I can’t spoil the ending of the series, or tell about the turn in Violet’s life. I will say that Hoffman once again excels in describing Brinkley’s Island as the family sees it, with its marshes and heron’s nest, its people and its bookstore. And, for those of us who love books and still return once in a while to favorite books, she has a message. “Every time a book is reread it’s entirely different depending on who the reader has become.”

I read all four books in the series over a year. I’d encourage anyone interested to read them together because they really are books about family, a bookstore, an island, and changes in life and love.

Alice Hoffman’s website is https://alicehoffman.com/

The Bookstore Family by Alice Hoffman. Amazon Original Stories, 2025.

Note: The Kindle version is free on Kindle Unlimited.

FTC Full Disclosure – I downloaded an ebook from Kindle Unlimited.