Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop – Jessica Redland

Published By: Boldwood
Pages: 392
Released On: 09/09/2025

Nestled amongst the comforting shelves of her beloved Bay Books, newly single Lily Appleton finds the peace and quiet she needs. But with Christmas just around the corner, Lily has to find an extra pair of hands to help her share the bookish magic.

After selling his business, Lars Jóhannsson is feeling like a character in a book awaiting his next plot twist! A job at Bay Books would give him the space he needs to contemplate his next move. He has fond memories of the bookshop on Castle Street, but returning there would mean confronting a painful past he’s been avoiding. It would also mean working with Lily and he’s fairly sure he’s the one person she’d never want to see again.

When Lily spots Lars’s job application, she’s torn. Lars could be the perfect fit for Bay Books, but the boy she thought she knew rejected her friendship many years ago and the hurt still lingers. With time ticking, Lily has no option but to take a chance on Lars, hoping his unexpected application turns out to be for the best.

Working together, Lily discovers a vulnerability that Lars has kept hidden away, along with a few surprising secrets. As the Christmas season sprinkles its magic, Lily discovers the warmth of renewed friendship and the joy of heartwarming traditions from Lars’s Icelandic roots.

And perhaps, surrounded by the quiet magic of the season and the soft glow of festive lights, there’s the possibility of finding a love as enchanting as the Northern Lights on a winter’s night.

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Boldwood for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

I love Christmas books and I love Jessica Redland Books so this was a win-win.

I really do love Jessica’s series that she’s written before, but I also love it when she brings out a completely fresh one, the promise of what’s to come.

There was so much I loved about this book, from the characters to the setting to the temperament and the storyline.

Lily was a lovely main character. She’s been through the ringer, she’s heartbroken and sad and lonely and feeling a bit lost and despondent, still living with her parents in her mid thirties – a situation I can fully relate to (except it’s just the one parent in my case). She was really lovely though and I was really willing her on. All the other characters are great too – although not always in a nice way. They all work in their own story but are great against Lily’s. And Lars, well, he just sounded dreamy.

The romance is gentle – I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say there’s a romance story. It’s not in your face or OTT, it’s believable, and it’s so subtle that it’s there, slowly slowly, and then BAM here it is. It was cute and realistic.

I’ve read, I think 16 of Jessica’s books, this is her 17th for me. And what I love is that whilst they can all be read as standalones, the individual series she has written do link at times. So you’re not missing out on anything by picking a book randomly, but if you have read the others than you get little hints of those characters and stories which was so lovely.

It doesn’t hide away from difficulties – grief, breakups, loneliness, bullying, illness – but Jessica has done it in such a sensitive way that it still feels joyful and uplifting.

I know this is part of a series already – Christmas on Castle Street – but I wonder if we will revisit the bookshop in any future novels or if it will just become a background piece like the other shops (not a negative). I would love to revisit it in future works if Jessica wanted to. I don’t want to leave these characters yet.

I read this at a particularly difficult time, I was not in a good place mentally and emotionally and I had lost my reading mojo – which for someone with 2,000 books is not a good thing – feeling miserable and couldn’t stop crying. But I eventually picked this up and Jessica gave me exactly what i needed in that moment – hope.