The Christmas Bookshop

Carmen Hogan is a nearly 30-year-old shop assistant in a dying industrial town on Scotland's west coast. She works at Dounston's, a once-beloved department store hollowed out by online shopping and retail park competition. Carmen habitually compares herself to her older sister, Sofia, a successful Edinburgh lawyer with a handsome husband, Federico, three children, and an increasingly lavish lifestyle. When Dounston's closes and the staff is made redundant, Carmen moves back in with her parents, jobless and directionless.

Sofia juggles a demanding legal career and three young children: prim Pippa, easygoing Jack, and anxious younger Phoebe. Their mother, Irene, repeatedly begs Sofia to help Carmen find work. Sofia resists until a meeting with her elderly client, Mr. McCredie, reveals a convergence of needs. Mr. McCredie owns an ancient bookshop on Victoria Street in Edinburgh's Old Town but has run through his family fortune by neglecting his Highland estate. With rents increasing in the new year, Sofia warns him the shop must turn a profit by Christmas or he will lose everything. She proposes sending Carmen to help.

Carmen resents the arrangement but accepts under pressure from her parents' quiet disappointment. She arrives in Edinburgh and is housed in the basement of Sofia's Georgian townhouse, next to Skylar, Sofia's polished student-nanny. Her first day at McCredie's is discouraging: The shop is a dusty fire hazard with no card reader and almost no foot traffic. Mr. McCredie is gentle and bespectacled, more interested in rare editions than in selling them. He casually reveals that Carmen is there to save the shop from closure, information Sofia had withheld. Carmen is furious, but after finding Mr. McCredie crying over a council letter confirming the rent increase, she promises to stay through Christmas.

Mrs. Marsh, Carmen's former supervisor at Dounston's, has also relocated to Edinburgh. She turns up at the shop and delivers her retail mantras: "Clean! Clear! Curated!" Galvanized, Carmen enlists Sofia's children to help clean on a Sunday. They uncover Christmas titles buried in the stacks, and Phoebe suggests Carmen read stories aloud, planting the seed for a weekly story time. In Mr. McCredie's attic, Carmen discovers old decorations, a dollhouse with dressed mice, and a childhood train set. She puts the train in the shop window with fairy lights and artificial snow, and for the first time, a crowd gathers outside.

Business picks up. Ramsay, a cash-strapped laird (a Scottish landed estate owner) who works as a book rep, brings hardback Hans Christian Andersen editions that sell well near the door. Oke, a Brazilian postdoctoral researcher studying dendrology (the science of trees), comes into the shop looking for a textbook. Carmen learns he is a Quaker who does not celebrate Christmas. Their rapport deepens over subsequent encounters. Oke takes Carmen to Camera Obscura, a historic attraction near the castle, and mentions the Ormiston Yew, an ancient tree and part of why he came to Scotland.

Bestselling self-help author Blair Pfenning uses the bookshop as a backdrop for a BBC Scotland publicity segment, generating enormous sales. Off camera, Blair confesses to Carmen that he feels like a fraud. He invites her to his hotel room; she declines. A thundersnow storm strands him in Edinburgh, and Carmen enjoys his attention but continues to refuse his advances. At a dinner Sofia hosts, Blair gravitates toward Skylar instead. After he leaves, the sisters watch Skylar dash out and hop into his waiting cab. They laugh together, and Carmen begins to see through Blair's charm.

At a Victoria Street party hosted by Bronagh, the proprietor of a magic shop, Carmen sees Dahlia, a café waitress, apparently arrive with Oke and assumes they are a couple. Bronagh gives Carmen a small glass vial, a potion for the sister bond. Meanwhile, well-dressed German visitors come to the shop asking about the McCredie family and old letters, but Mr. McCredie refuses to see them. At the Edinburgh Christmas fair, Oke joins Carmen and the children. In a dark passageway afterward, they listen to a choir rehearsing carols, and Carmen leans toward Oke for a kiss. Just then, Dahlia appears crying, and Blair calls Carmen's phone. Flustered, Carmen loudly says "See you, Blair" to seem unavailable. Oke, told by Skylar that Carmen has been pursuing Blair, believes it and turns away.

Tensions converge at the bookshop's Christmas party. A child notices a train carriage jumping on the track, and Carmen extracts a hidden photograph: a young blond man labeled "Erich, 1944." Mr. McCredie breaks down and reveals his lifelong secret. His mother had an affair with Erich, a German prisoner of war at the Cultybraggan internment camp during World War II. McCredie is the product of that affair, raised by Sorley McCredie, who knew but never forgave. The shame led to a lifetime of isolation. At the same party, Skylar tells Oke that Carmen has been desperately pursuing Blair, and Oke, believing it confirmed, decides to return to Brazil.

That night, Sofia goes into labor early. Carmen drives the children to the hospital and reveals that Skylar called Phoebe "fat" months earlier. Enraged, Sofia channels her fury and delivers the baby. Carmen holds Phoebe in the waiting room and assures her she is beautiful and loved. At the school Christmas concert the next morning, Phoebe, who froze on stage the previous year, sings a solo of "Little Jesus, Sweetly Sleep." Her voice soars, and the audience is in tears.

Carmen hints to Mr. McCredie that she wants to stay on permanently, possibly renting rooms in his upstairs flat and continuing to run the shop. He is delighted. Then he mentions that Oke stopped by that morning before flying home. Carmen encounters Dahlia on the street, crying because Oke rejected her, explaining he cannot date students. Carmen realizes Oke was never with Dahlia and races to the university, but his office is cleared out.

Distraught, Carmen boards a bus going the wrong direction and stumbles through the snow to the Ormiston Yew. Inside the shelter of the massive tree, she finds Oke, who came to say goodbye to it before his flight. They clear up the misunderstandings that kept them apart: Skylar's lies, Blair's bragging, and Carmen's defensive invocation of Blair's name. Carmen tells Oke she likes him, not Blair. They kiss under the ancient yew.

Before Christmas, the German family returns, and Mr. McCredie agrees to see them. They share letters revealing that Erich was a 17-year-old conscripted sailor who fell in love with McCredie's mother at the camp. Erich was returned to Germany after the war and executed; he never knew he had a son. Sofia and Carmen name the new baby Eric, after Mr. McCredie's biological father, giving the name a clean slate. Oke stays at Mr. McCredie's as a guest, and Carmen's plan to remain at the shop takes shape.

On Christmas Day, the extended family gathers: Carmen, Oke, Sofia, Federico, the four children, and Carmen and Sofia's parents. Oke offers a Quaker moment of silent grace, speaking about finding peace in every day. In the epilogue, Pippa and Phoebe find Bronagh's glass vial on Carmen's dressing table. Phoebe accidentally spills it. They replace it with water and make a sister pinkie swear never to tell, quietly mirroring the renewed bond between their mother and their aunt.