The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

June 18, 2020

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

Natalie Harper is a successful executive at a wine distribution company in northern California, until a horrendous tragedy upends her life.  She returns to San Francisco to care for her aging grandfather and try to figure out where her life is going.  On impulse, Natalie decides to quit her job (which she hates) and take over the family bookshop.  But the bookshop is in deep financial trouble, and she wonders if it is too late to rescue the store.

  

As I'm not a real fan of women's fiction or romance, I found the storyline somewhat predictable, as I pretty well figured out the rest of the story about 1/3 of the way through the book (who the love interest was, that Granddad was going to find buried treasure in the basement and save the bookshop, etc.).  There are too many coincidences that stretched credulity a little too far (a $12,000 military medal, a $19 million Tang dynasty vase, and a priceless set of original hand-colored Audubon bird books, all in the same building?  Which has frequent floods and earthquakes, yet all the artifacts are still in perfect condition?  The most famous children's author in America drops everything to do a reading for her little store?).  Unlike her previous novel (The Oysterville Sewing Circle) where the love interest shows up on the second page of the book, at least there was a little character development first.  This one really wasn't my style.

But if you are an avid romance reader or enjoy women's fiction, or want a happy ending where everything works out perfectly, you will enjoy Wiggs' latest novel, and to be fair, she is a very good writer, much better than many romance authors.  With all the upheaval and social unrest in the world right now, maybe a perfect happy ending isn't a bad thing.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in return for a review.