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A review by bonnie_bee
Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland
2.5
Set in York, England, during the most recent pandemics to touch the world at the current date, Found in a Bookshop is a collection of several characters all gravitating around their love of books and the place that brings that thread of creative freedom to life. As a student of York University, the pages should scream out to me. I too was in York, living alone and working while studying when the streets were deserted, some of the paragraphs stirred that memory for me vividly, and the connection of Kelly, the bookshop manager, working at some point as a personal assistant like I have done to fund my degree was almost eery in how much I could relate.
That being said, despite the shots of prompting a coincidental familiarity the style of writing isn’t something I would usually gravitate towards. The writing itself is perfectly fine, beautiful in places, and the characters are perfectly sweet, but following so many stories, jumping back and forth between them especially at the beginning when the connections were shallow between the characters didn’t make me want to turn the page. Not to say there aren’t good stories inside, I know several people I would recommend this book to for casual reading that would fall in love with Kelly losing her love to a lie he told, to Madisson and her missing pieces, to Loveday trying to live up to Archies legacy and his bookshop, but mostly to those that were lost in the pandemic, the short introductions to a wife losing her husband and the elderly couple who lost their partners too soon. Having lived through COVID, however, I don’t relate to the assertions made wherein the pages paint a picture of a city I spent four years of my life with stories that don’t reflect the way I remember them.
And I think the author understood that. From her words directly:
… sometimes, there’s a missing part of the chemistry. Or something in the book that just doesn’t work for you. Maybe the supposed romantic hero has the same name as the ex you will never quite recover from. It could be that the setting doesn’t appeal or there’s something in the way the characters relate to each other that doesn’t fit into the receptor that you need it to fit into. Sometimes, you do not care enough to want to read on. This is something that books understand. That writers understand. That other readers understand. It’s a fact of life. All foodies do not love bananas.
So, even though I can’t rate this highly and keep my list reasonable, all foodies do not love bananas will be something I use well and use often when discussing the likes and dislikes of books read, and I thank her greatly for the book recommendations, they were the best part of the book, and I felt like I was truly at the bookstore, writing to “Lost for Words” for recommendations.
That being said, despite the shots of prompting a coincidental familiarity the style of writing isn’t something I would usually gravitate towards. The writing itself is perfectly fine, beautiful in places, and the characters are perfectly sweet, but following so many stories, jumping back and forth between them especially at the beginning when the connections were shallow between the characters didn’t make me want to turn the page. Not to say there aren’t good stories inside, I know several people I would recommend this book to for casual reading that would fall in love with Kelly losing her love to a lie he told, to Madisson and her missing pieces, to Loveday trying to live up to Archies legacy and his bookshop, but mostly to those that were lost in the pandemic, the short introductions to a wife losing her husband and the elderly couple who lost their partners too soon. Having lived through COVID, however, I don’t relate to the assertions made wherein the pages paint a picture of a city I spent four years of my life with stories that don’t reflect the way I remember them.
And I think the author understood that. From her words directly:
… sometimes, there’s a missing part of the chemistry. Or something in the book that just doesn’t work for you. Maybe the supposed romantic hero has the same name as the ex you will never quite recover from. It could be that the setting doesn’t appeal or there’s something in the way the characters relate to each other that doesn’t fit into the receptor that you need it to fit into. Sometimes, you do not care enough to want to read on. This is something that books understand. That writers understand. That other readers understand. It’s a fact of life. All foodies do not love bananas.
So, even though I can’t rate this highly and keep my list reasonable, all foodies do not love bananas will be something I use well and use often when discussing the likes and dislikes of books read, and I thank her greatly for the book recommendations, they were the best part of the book, and I felt like I was truly at the bookstore, writing to “Lost for Words” for recommendations.