The Shop at Hoopers Bend

The Shop at Hoopers Bend is the kind of book that’s chock-full of all sorts of amazing coincidences. It starts when Jonquil, who has been staying with her aunt’s PA while waiting to be sent to a summer camp, finds a mug in a market stall with her name on it. On the train to summer camp, she passes the place the mug was made. After sneaking off the train, a fat little dog called Pirate is inexplicably drawn to her as she sits outside the abandoned shop she feels strangely at home in. Then the old woman, Bailey, who owns the shop, shows up out of the blue, and needs someone to help look after her because her knee is injured from a long drive. All these little coincidences make you lean into the book, hardly daring to breathe, because they could be coincidences, or serendipity as Bailey says … but it could also be magic. It has to be magic! A delicate, shy kind of magic that would disappear if it noticed you looking at it – but at the same time, the real kind of magic that says we’re all made of star dust. The absolute best kind of magic.

The Shop at Hoopers Bend is a welcome return to Emily Rodda’s older style of novel, more along the lines of The Best Kept Secret or Finders Keepers than the Deltora Quest series. I absolutely adored it and felt the same thrill reading The Shop at Hoopers Bend as I did when I read Pigs Might Fly under my covers at night all those years ago. For ages 8+.

Dani Solomon