The Lost and Found Bookshop

Natalie Harper is finally getting the promotion and corner office she's always deserved. She keeps a sharp eye on the room looking for her mother in the crowd, hoping that she'll make the effort to drive out to Sonoma from San Francisco and just this once give Natalie her hard-earned due. But mom is a flighty, bohemian book store owner, as scattered and devil-may-care as Natalie is uptight and focused. Still, Natalie's entire world is upended when she learns of her mother's sudden death. 

Not only has Natalie inherited responsibility for The Lost and Found Bookshop and the debt her mother has blithely accrued but she's now the sole caretaker of her beloved grandfather Andrew, whose health has been inexplicably

deteriorating for quite some time. Walking away from the security of her high-powered job, Natalie moves into her mother's upstairs apartment, pouring over the ledgers, looking for a miracle that might help her save the business which she begins to realize she's always secretly loved.

Enter general contractor Peach Gallagher whose precocious daughter Dorothy is a fixture in the children's section of the store. Natalie reluctantly hires him, the budget being non-existent, to repair the most glaring problems and no one, except Nat herself, has any trouble figuring out why he seems to be dragging the work out indefinitely. Well-read and personable, Peach is a much more complicated man than might appear on the surface, and his genuine affection for Andrew and burgeoning friendship with Natalie do not go unnoticed. 

This is a full-up romance novel, not my usual forte, but this is Susan Wiggs after all, so the dialog is snappy, the pace is quick, and if it's a tad predictable isn't that okay in these terribly unpredictable times? The book is about discovery, discovery of oneself, one's prejudices, and what truly brings us happiness. It's about a mother-daughter relationship reclaimed and there's a nifty secondary plot that examines the joy of doing the right thing even if it's at one's own expense. 

"The Lost and Found Bookshop" is a simply delightful story that came along at just the right time for me. I loved it. I wanted to be the woman who came downstairs to the book displays each morning, flipping the switch on the coffee maker, checking on grandad in his little ground floor apartment, unlocking the door to the two devoted staff members and the easy-going Gallagher, primed to spend another day talking books and life with like-minded customers. For a couple of days I was totally immersed in another world and that made all the difference. Don't you just love authors who can do that for you?