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Posted 20 hours ago

Found in a Bookshop: The perfect Autumn read - heart-warming and unforgettable

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These vignettes truly capture the tone of 2020 with loneliness, fear and grief being juxtaposed with community, joy and love. If you're looking for a book to make you think more deeply about life, then this would be an excellent choice. I know I couldn’t have listened to it if it had been published earlier, so the timing has been perfect for me. Of course, this is the pandemic- we meet people who are struggling with COVID, with isolation, with abuse.

Although she’d never have chosen it, her dance with cancer has changed her life in many positive ways. Some people might find this difficult to read about particularly if they were separated from loved ones for a period of time or if they lost someone, whether to Covid or another illness, at this time. I was surprised at the number of books I’d already read, but even more delighted with the number of books I haven’t even heard of. The poignancy of characters and story was phenomenal and it will forever be one of my favourite books. Wasn’t sure how I’d go delving into the pandemic… yet it was a joy to read, as are all of Stephanie Butland’s magical books.I loved the quotes and the chapters where it feels that Stephanie Butland is talking to me personally about the power of books and reading. They have decided to set out on their last journey together, without ever leaving the bench at the bottom of their garden in Whitby. It made me laugh, it made me cry and left me with a feeling of community spirit - I will definitely be recommending this to others, it is a fantastic read' ?

As requests begin to pour in, what follows is a lovely and heartwarming story full of love, empathy, and the best of humanity. Great books recommended and the list at the end is great which means more to add to my tbr pile and some I already have. We follow their life-long love story from when they first meet and theirs is a really poignant part of the book.

Personally I found it quite a cathartic read and it helped me process some of my lingering emotions around my own lockdown experience. The intricate plot lines, the pandemic situation, the development of the characters - a great achievement. It’s the state of mind and heart of the person reading it that will make the book grow into something greater than the words printed in it. But the Kindle edition was available for just 99p, and we were just a few days away from flying to the UK. I also liked the times when the author directly addressed the reader, telling us that it is okay not to love the book that everyone else is raving about, and that it’s okay to give up on a book which we are not enjoying, that reading should be a pleasure and not a chore.

Most of the threads are tied up nicely by the end, albeit with some difficult, sometimes tragic events along the way. I also loved the chapters that were interspersed from the author to the reader - very wise words in those too! It's really interesting to think of the role that books had in the pandemic to help people to cope and certainly I find that that's still true now. As a book lover, nothing makes me happier than reading about people discovering books and finding joy and solace within the pages of books.Loveday and Kelly (Saturday girl Madison as well as Nathan) are soon all helping people in the best ways they can. Everything Stephanie Butland wrote about about that period was so relatable, even though the story was set in York - thank you. I work in the library and read over 100 books a year in various genres but still would not be so presumptuous as to think I could recommend books to people I don’t know. At various points, I had to take a break from reading it because it brought back memories of lockdown and the sense of claustrophobia, frustration and fear I experienced and that was quite hard to deal with. I think a part of this was because the story is driven far more by the characters than by the plot and I'd be hard-pressed to define exactly what the plot is.

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