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The Bookstore Wedding is the second short story in Alice Hoffman’s The Once Upon a Time Bookshop series (following The Bookstore Sisters). Although I read the two stories in order and can’t wait for the February 2025 release of the third story (The Bookstore Keepers), each edition can stand alone, so you can enjoy the stories one by one or even out of order. The series is a must-read for everyone who appreciates reading, baking, romance, family love, and a touch of magic.
The series follows two sisters, Isabel Gibson, who returns to her hometown in Maine after a self-imposed exile of almost twenty-two years, and her older sister Sophie, who runs their family bookstore and bakeshop in the wake of their parents’ deaths. In The Bookstore Sisters, it is Sophie’s teenage daughter who reaches out to her aunt for help when the bookstore is struggling, and in The Bookstore Wedding, Isabel and her fiancé Jack, an island ferryman and the long lost love of Isabel’s life, try to plan their wedding after five years of delay due to family emergencies and circumstances. The Bookstore Wedding also offers romantic promise for Sophie whose husband Matt drowned when she was eight months pregnant with their daughter, and who is facing a difficult medical prognosis, the same one that took her mother's life when the two sisters were children.
The Once Upon a Time Bookshop series is about more than romantic love, and Hoffman takes readers on a lovely journey through the sisters’ relationship as they navigate their past trauma and their emotional abandonment of one another. By the second story, the bookshop is once again thriving, aided by a bakery that features Mrs. Gibson’s magical recipes. The sisters bake Never Get Lost Oatmeal Cookies, I’ll Miss You Forever Cakes, I Must Be In Heaven Chocolate Brownies, and Blue Moon Blueberry Muffins. They connect with the literary world by hosting bookshop events and they commune with the natural world by visiting the marshlands that surround their island home to visit the Heron Tree, a place their mother always told them was enchanted. The touch of magic that runs through the series casts a sparkling light over the dark circumstances the sisters face and teaches readers that there is “never a bad time to fall in love.”
I absolutely love this series! The short stories are small bites of delight for Alice Hoffman fans and they will make new readers hungry for more. If you appreciate the magic of reading, writing, baking, sisterhood, and love, you will devour these beautiful short stories. You can find them here.
Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Mermaids Monthly, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard, and Corvid Queen. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/
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