Good Evening All,

Happy start of a new week! Hope that you’re all doing well and looking forward to a tiny bit of freedom being returned to our lives. In the UK lockdown measures are slowly easing up. In Wales specifically (where I live) the rules have already started to change and we are no longer on a stay at home order. This has been changed to a stay local order with businesses slowly being allowed to reopen. I am really looking forward to some normality being returned and mostly, I’m looking forward to going to see my family who are all in England. We’ve nearly done it guys!

Book 📖

Initially it was the cover that caught my attention, but after reading the synopsis of this book, I really wanted to read it. Let’s face it, who doesn’t want to be uplifted at the moment. Thank you to @TransworldBooks and Helen Paris for this advanced copy of Lost Property in return for an honest review. Lost Property is due to be published on 13th May 2021 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Dot Watson is as lost as the property that she handles at work. She takes pride in her job at the lost property office and considers it a public service to reunite people with their belongings. This hasn’t hasn’t always been her life though. At one point she was living in Paris, making a career for herself and travelling Europe. But when tragedy strikes her family, she is forced to return home and it is then that she loses her way.

It is one particular customer at work that pulls on Dot’s heartstrings and she embarks on a journey to reunite him with his much loved item. Little does Dot know, this journey may be what helps her find her way home too.

General Thoughts 🤔

This book definitely gave me all of the feels. It was so heart warming but also really quite sad at times. When I first started reading, I did think to myself that surely this entire book couldn’t be based on different items in lost property. However as soon as Dot’s story started to weave into the items and stories from the lost property office, I was hooked.

I don’t suppose I’ve ever really thought much about lost property but this book made me think hard about how people’s belongings all being in one place like that could be quite eery and romantic all at the same time. I don’t think it’s a job I could do, I’d get so caught up in stories behind items and I think I’d become too invested. Learning more about Dot throughout the book, the penny dropped for me and I realised why Dot clung so hard onto this job.

Characters 👬👭👫

What an endearing character Dot was. I felt like I went through her highs and her lows with her throughout this book. I’m sure all of us can think of a time when we have felt like Dot did. Lost without a meaningful purpose and feeling like you’re just bobbing along in life. I was rooting for her the whole way and I really wanted her to let go of her guilt and live her life as she had always planned to.

Dot’s sister Philippa was a really interesting character to me and I have a family member that I swear she could have been based upon. Philippa seemed quite hard faced and clinical for the majority but then towards the end, her guard was let down and I learnt a lot about her (as did Dot). I find relationships between sisters really interesting and I loved seeing their relationship play out in the book.

Writing Style ✍️

This is going to sound quite silly, but I imagine that Helen Paris is quite a sensitive soul. Reading this book was like reading the words of someone with such a soft, loving and caring aura about them. Her writing was beautiful and delicate and was perfect for the story.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

I would probably say that I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. I thought that it would be quite an easy breezy light hearted read, but it turned out to be really very heart warming and emotional. I felt so uplifted by the end of this story and it’s most definitely left a smile on my face. If you need to be cheered up but don’t mind a few bumps along the way, definitely give this book a go.

😍😍😍😍😩