Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I was thrilled to win a copy of Susan Wiggs’ The Lost and Found Bookshop in a Goodreads giveway; if there’s anything better than a book, it’s a book about books, right? (Or about food…or about history…really, nothing’s better than books.) What I discovered as I read, however, is that Wiggs’ novel is two things more than anything else–a love story involving life changes and growth and a love song for the city of San Francisco. It’s clear that Wiggs loves books and reading, yes, but I was a bookseller for 10 years, and this just didn’t feel like a book about the bookstore. Of course, the description on the back does an excellent job of describing the book as it is, so perhaps I was just misled by the title? (I’m also pretty picky, having worked as a bookseller for 10 years; her editor should have been pickier about a few of the publication dates of the titles she mentions.*)

At any rate, this was mostly women’s fiction with the sort of detail about San Francisco that will speak to those familiar with the city (being from our country’s other coast, I could feel I was missing out on some of the ambience.) As Natalie deals with her mother’s death and the precarious financial situation she inherited, she rediscovers her past from a different perspective; she also discovers items from her family’s and the city’s history hidden inside her pre-1906-earthquake building. It’s a nice story with an interesting historical component–and an element of hope that’s a good thing in a book published in 2020. Enjoy!

*If you watched your bookstore owner mother handsell a book published in 1992 from the New Release table when you were in elementary school, then that same mother shouldn’t be encouraging you to read a book published in 2005 while you were STILL in elementary school. The 2005 book took place in the 1970s, and I’m guessing that’s why it slipped through the cracks, but a picture book published in 1996 is also mentioned as a girlhood favorite. Dates were just not checked carefully enough.