500 Miles from You is the third Jenny Colgan novel to feature the Scottish Highland town of Kirrinfief, which she first featured in The Bookshop on the Corner and  then returned to in The Bookshop on the Shore. But most of the characters from those previous novels only feature briefly in this one. The tone is a little more serious: while those previous novels also deal with some serious themes, 500 Miles from You starts with the death of a child and both the main characters are dealing with trauma. Lissa is a London nurse, and Cormak is a nurse in Kirrinfief. They swap jobs and homes, though she has a small place in a nursing residence and he has his own house. They are both single and looking. When they swap their jobs, they meet lots of new people and become popular in their new locations. But even though they have never met, they maintain a correspondence about their patients, and get to talking about their own lives to each other. They become curious to meet each other.

Colgan writes well, filling her story with funny characters. Eilidh Beaton performs the unabridged audiobooks with plenty of energy, bringing those characters to life. The book has lots of big city/small town, English/Scottish, female/male contrasts. It is most interesting as a depiction of life as a nurse, with the many challenges nurses face and the rewards that the job offers. The romantic theme is a bit overdone, but then it is a romantic comedy, so maybe that’s to be expected. 

Christian Perring is editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews. He teaches philosophy in the NYC area and is an APPA certified philosophical counselor.

Categories: Fiction, AudioBooks

Keywords: romantic comedy, nursing