🧵🪡 Welcome to the Highland Repair Shop, where mending broken things – be they clocks, compasses or hearts – is a way of life.
After a gruelling few years in city hospitals, trainee doctor Alice hopes a new, small-town post will bring quiet to her racing mind. Instead, she finds a place brimming with eccentricity and curiosity, and people who seem to see straight through her carefully controlled facade.
Murray has returned to his hometown with a broken heart and his tail between his legs. Volunteering at the family-run repair shop is meant to be temporary… until a chance encounter starts to crack his emotional armour.
Meanwhile, mountain ranger Finlay lives for solitude and the wild and rugged scenery. But when a broken compass draws him reluctantly into town life, he finds himself pulled not just into a community project, but into the kind of tangled feelings he’s spent a lifetime avoiding.
As a new garden is built and winter weather rages, lives will be patched, polished and set on entirely new courses. Can these lonely hearts be mended, and finally find happiness and love?
About The Author
My Review
This is a tender, whimsical, and quietly uplifting story that blends small-town warmth with gentle romance and a touch of Highland magic. Kiley Dunbar creates a captivating setting in Cairn Dhu, a remote village at the end of the train line, where newcomers and locals alike are searching for purpose, healing, and connection.
Dr Alice Hargreave, fragile after upheaval and unsure of her place, brings a relatable vulnerability to the tale as she adjusts to life far from Manchester. Her encounters with the eccentric residents—Murray, nursing a bruised heart; Finlay, the reclusive off-grid ranger with a sweet tooth; and Cary, the charming “clock-wheelbarrow man”—provide both humour and heart. Each man is drawn with depth and quirks, adding richness to the village tapestry.
Dunbar excels at portraying community: nosy neighbours, cosy shops, and tender moments of support that slowly help Alice rediscover her courage. Woven through it all is a subtle thread of folklore that gives Cairn Dhu its own enchantment.
Warm, character-driven, and full of charm, this novel is a delightful celebration of second chances, self-discovery, and finding where you truly belong.
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