If you feel like letting your hair down and just slipping into a feel-good, somewhat quirky and downright ‘nice’ read, consider Ruth Hogan’s The Keeper of Lost Things.
It’s the story about Anthony Peardew’s (an eccentric loner and once published author of short stories) strange hobby to collect and keep lost things. When he finds lost items, he painstakingly labels each one with date and time of when and where they were found. He stores the items in his locked home office and remains secretive about it. Anthony is clearly driven by something – perhaps a loss of his own that he is trying to compensate for?
He is intrigued by the objects he finds and writes stories about them. But in the end there are just too many and his time starts running out. His housekeeper, Laura, who he trusts above anyone else, inherits the job of trying to return the lost items to their owners. She finds innovative ways of accomplishing said task, and meets a few interesting characters and helpers along the way.
It is a charming story, and a cleverly crafted debut novel. It’s different and unexpected, perhaps even somewhat frivolous, yet offered me a lovely retreat filled with a good mix of different characters, magic, a few ghosts, dogs and some very funny moments.
The Keeper of Lost Things received mixed reviews on Goodreads, some loved the novel, others not so much. I believe as readers we sometimes need to be open to different genres (and I am not referring to Mills & Boon) and allow ourselves to just relax into the comfort of an enchanting story that’s well written about love, loss, friendship and a spoonful of magic thrown in.
An escape is an escape, after all.
