Just So Stories

It’s time for a blog break after another full-on reviewing few months but here’s one to take to the beach with you. I’ll be back after a couple of weeks respite before The Kid and I take off to Vanuatu for a week in mid-October. I know many of you will have had the usual hectic third term so give yourself permission to relax and recuperate before that hard slog until the end of the year. Reviews will resume Monday 5th October at this stage.

Hachette

9780733654039|July 21, 2026|RRP $34.99

I’ve been lucky enough to review a couple of Sophie’s books and they are just so delightful. I love the ‘circle of women’ themes and they are always liberally laced with humour, pithy wisdom and truly engaging characters. In this one we meet a very eclectic group of women with the main character essentially being the ‘frock’ shop that is central to the narrative.

Daphne, who lives very near the shop, where she has always worked. She started work there as a very young woman when it was owned by a sparkling, eccentric but talented designer and dressmaker and she has continued working there until the present day when it has become a second-hand clothes outlet for a charity.

But to Daphne it is still the frock shop and she treats all her customers as though they are all special and welcome. She takes pride in providing them with the same service and attention she used when she was employed by Ophelia, the diva.

Into Daphne’s circle and the shop comes a very disparate group: Lucy, teenager with a fraught and frightening home life who loves to design clothes and is yearning to be free of school and her family, Adelaide, Daphne’s old friend returning from a heady career overseas and carrying a dark secret, Christina, former local girl who has become a well-known and loved film star but has fled her life in Los Angeles on the heels of a scandal not of her own making and, lastly, Margot, whose life has become smaller, narrower and more impoverished since the death of her parents.

The clothes now in the frock shop all have their own stories, in just the same way as these women have theirs. And I love the technique of introducing each special outfit with its backstory in between chapters. Each item hails from a different time and a different woman but they all that thread of story woven into them and now, thanks to the frock shop, they get to have another story.

Once again, Sophie has provided readers with a narrative that is a gorgeous patchwork of drama, humour, pathos and empathy with another heart-warming resolution. I read this over just a couple of nights as I was so invested and engaged with the characters and thoroughly enjoyed it. And quite naturally, as an inveterate ‘op shopper’ since I was a 14-year-old in Sydney, I love giving pre-loved clothes a new story myself.

It is exactly that perfect beach or poolside, balcony or back patio read – meaty but also frothy enough for a restful holiday interlude. So get thee to the library or bookshop and pick this one up (and perhaps a couple more of Sophie’s books?) and just binge out – preferably with snacks and a glass of something suitable by your side.

This one gets a full-skirted 5 👗👗👗👗👗rating from me for readers from teens upwards.