The Lost and Found Bookshop

 

By Susan Wiggs

Natalie's life changed in every way in one day. She quit her job and lost her boyfriend and her mom later that same day. Now she has to take over her mom's affairs including running the family bookstore and taking care of her aging and senile grandfather.

Once she gets into her mother's affairs, she finds out that her mother owed lots of people lots of money. Most of which was spent on the ancient building the bookstore and the family apartments are located in. And the rest on keeping the bookstore running. Looking at all the problems with the building and the business, the obvious thing would be to close the bookstore and sell the building. But, contrary to what Natalie previously assumed, her mom did not own the business or the building. It is all owned by the grandfather. And he absolutely refuses to go along with Natalie's desire to sell everything. 

But the building needs some repairs. Parts of it are so bad, it would be condemned if it were ever inspected. Also, the downstairs apartment where the grandfather is living needs some assisted-living improvements. Enter "Peach" Gallagher, handyman, father, and all-around-good-guy. Not to mention just plain gorgeous. 

But Peach isn't the only handsome bachelor to enter Natalie's orbit. The other is personable, successful author Trevor Dashwood. And unlike Peach, Trevor is obviously strongly attracted  to Natalie. And proceeds to woo her while Peach looks on, once burned and twice shy after a painful divorce.

Often, in a romance story like this, the main barrier to the girl finding the right boy is the wrong boy the girl is usually involved with. If there is an interfering mother, usually the girl and mom work through their problems and come to a better understanding. And the girl dumps or loses the wrong boy friend and usually overlooks the right boyfriend until something causes her to realize he is the one. But not in this story. We never even get to meet the problematic mom or the wrong boyfriend. They are both bumped off in the beginning shortly after Natalie quits her job, killed in a plane crash. In  fact, they were probably already dead when she quit, although she did not know that. 

Also, in a lot of romances, the wrong boy is wrong because he is not a nice person. But that is not the case here. Both of the possible boyfriends are decent, good guys, as was the boyfriend who died. He also was a decent, good guy who in fact was planning on asking Natalie to marry him the same day that he died. The only thing that made him the wrong boy was that Natalie was no longer interested in him.

Anyway, these twists on the usual romance novel made it a lot more interesting to me and I really enjoyed the story. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.