(Read as part of a book club) I'm conflicted about "The Lost Bookshop". Looking back at it, it's not bad and I was able to finish it without giving up. However, as it usually is, a book that you didn't have high hopes for, but it turns out okayish leaves a better impression than one which you really liked the premise of, but it falls short. "The Lost Bookshop" is the latter for me. Let me explain.

The book follows a story across two different timelines, which are interconnected. About 100 years in the past there is Opaline - a woman running away from home and his abusive brother to work as a book dealer, traveling around, while being hunted, trying to find a place for herself. In the present the story follows two people. The first one is Martha - a woman who also runs away from her home, from an abusive husband, to work as a servant for a mysterious character. The other person is Henry - an university graduate, hunting for a lost manuscript, one that he suspects, could've been stored in the titular lost bookshop.

Now, I thought that the premise of the book is amazing. However, my problem with the execution is that, the bookshop is not that important really. 4/5th of the book just follows the character's intertwined stories and, while it has some amazing or really terrifying moments, most of it plays out like a telenovela. The characters are pretty one-dimensional. There are plenty of serious topics involved, but none truly developed. Hearts are constantly being broken, everyone has to get in terms with their pasts, there is love, kissing, sex, abuse, murder, constant misunderstandings, that made me roll my eyes in so many cases. While I understand that relationships aren't that easy in real life, especially when there are elements like past abuse involved, I just couldn't stomach most of this drama that just dragged on and on. Another issue is that you can usually see the plot twists coming from the mile away, since there is an insight from the past and many patterns repeat themselves. I'm disappointed because it could've really been a better book.

Edit: My book club came to the almost unanimous conclusion that the book is mostly trash, so it's not just a me problem