The Travelling Bookshop: Mim and the Mother Muddle by Katrina Nannestad

Title: The Travelling Bookshop: Mim and the Mother Muddle

Author: Katrina Nannestad

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 5^th March 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240               

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: The right book might just change your life …

Mim Cohen roams the world in a travelling bookshop, with her dad and brother and a horse called Flossy.

Flossy leads them where she will, to the place where they’re needed most … the place where the perfect book will find its way home.

Now Mim has arrived in Salzburg — the city of Mozart and mountains, gardens and castles, Sacher torte and sausages … and Mum!

Mim knows they’re here to help Mum recover from the bump to her head. To show her love and patience until her memory returns.

If only they could find Mum the right book. If only Dad would stop giving everyone the same silly book.

The charming new adventure from award-winning author Katrina Nannestad and beloved illustrator Cheryl Orsini.

~*~

Finally, Mim and her brother are going to Salzburg, and to Mum! After six books travelling the world, selling books and helping people, maybe they can finally help the person they want to help the most. Their mother. And to help her, they need to find her the right book. But can they? And what will happen if they can’t? How will they solve this bookish mystery?

The penultimate Travelling Bookshop book has the Cohen family on the way to Vienna to see their mother, an engineer who has been unwell following a head injury, and as a result, she doesn’t know who they are, yet, Flossy always knows where they need to be. This time, she stops in Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg. Why? It turns out that Mim’s mother is I Salzburg! She needs their help to remember them though, so they set about helping Julia recover her memories. Mim more than Dad and Nat. They’re happy to have her as she is, Nat likes being called Sacher Torte and collecting his Ms, and dad keeps giving everyone a copy of The Gingerbread Man. She’s sure it’s the wrong book, as are all the others, because nothing seems to be working out, and mum is convinced they’re not her family.

But there are flickers of recognition at times that Min hangs onto, hoping Julia will remember them. It’s touching, as the family starts to reunite and reconnect, to become part of each other’s lives again. It’s joyful, just like the previous five books, filled with the magic of the bookshop that transforms its space and the language of the books, and its inhabitants based on where they are needed next. They’ve gone from Amsterdam, to Greece, Paris, London, and Venice, all around Europe to help people find the right book. To find mum. And along the way, Mim collects words, Nat collects letters, and they are joined by an outrageous cast of characters who bring their world to life.

This time, it’s mum who needs the most help. Other people need help too, with their cafes, their tours, their schoolwork, and creating an all-in-one instrument. Will these works of engineering genius help mum regain her memories as well? This is what the basis of the latest Travelling Bookshop is about. And it’s been done well, bringing the difficulties of coping with memory loss to life, and how it affects those around you. And how everyone responds to the changes in different ways. Nat’s acceptance of his new name is hard for Mim, who is hoping things will go back to how they were when they were a family together.

The sixth book in this series is just as good as the previous five, and it feels like we’re coming to the end of the Cohen family’s journey. What is next? Who knows, but it looks like it is going to be a good finale to come that will bring things together well. Even in this book, it felt like things were coming together for a finale well. It was uplifting and joyful, and I am looking forward to the next book.