The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs (Review by Stacie Kitchen)

Rating: 4/5

When tragedy strikes and both Natalie’s mother and fiancé pass away in a plane crash, Natalie must move back home to take over the family business. Giving up her highly lucrative, yet stressful job for a winery, Natalie must make difficult choices and take over the floundering bookstore that her mother owned. The building that houses her childhood home above the bookstore is crumbling, and the bills of the store far exceed anything Natalie could afford to pay back. Natalie pleads to her ailing grandfather, Grandy, to sell the building to pay back the debts, but he consistently refuses.

Peach Gallagher, the handyman, comes to the Lost and Found Bookshop to fix up a downstairs apartment for Grandy. He is attractive, smart, well-read, and has an adorable daughter named Dorothy with an ex-wife. Natalie is immediately drawn to Peach, and he is reliably there for her in her effort to get the building and bookstore back up and running.

Dorothy pleads to one of the best-selling author Trevor Dashwood to host an author event at the Lost and Found Bookstore to bring up sales, and he agrees. Trevor is handsome and refined and completely smitten with Natalie. Natalie, Peach, and Trevor make a delightful love triangle as the three of them figure out their wants and needs in a relationship.

The Lost and Found Bookshop is a very heartwarming story with many endearing characters. Susan Wiggs even creates a hundred-year-old building that is a character within itself and who’s history is revealed bit by bit to Natalie and her family. The Lost and Found Bookshop is more than a simple love story; there are themes of starting over, heartbreak, loss, dealing with Alzheimer’s, love, and friendship. I’m a sucker for any book set in a bookstore, and this one was no different. I couldn’t give it a 5-star rating because it was a bit slow in parts and had a little cheesy ending, but overall the story tugged on my heart strings and left me smiling.