I think that all keen readers have a secret fantasy to own a bookshop, don’t they? (Until they think about the economics of the book industry, the presence of e-books and the competition of supermarkets, that is.) So, like the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, this is a feel-good movie for booklovers. Bill Nighy plays his usual gruff but loveable older man (who becomes more attractive the older he and I both become) and Emily Mortimer plays a sweet, wounded thing who doesn’t deserve such bastardry. The foreshadowing is clunky and so the ending is thoroughly predictable. But it’s a pleasant little thing, that makes you feel like popping into a bookshop to buy a book on the way home.
My rating: 3 stars.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 