"The Lost Bookshop" And My Thoughts On Its Mismatched Marketing

Before we go too deep into this post, I need to start with a few disclaimers.

First, this post is not directed towards Evie Woods or anyone on or affiliated with her team.

Second, there will be spoilers for The Lost Bookshop.

Content warnings for familial and marital abuse, domestic violence, forced institutionalization, abduction, abandonment, loss of a child, and death, as depicted in The Lost Bookshop. Reader discretion is advised.

via Goodreads

I'm a mood reader with a mile-long TBR list. As you can imagine, this often results in books waiting in the wings for months or even years. The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods is one of those books.

I'd had a physical copy for a while before picking it up for the first time and it didn't take long to pique my interest.

However, I also have a habit of reading several books at once. Although I'm usually able to keep the different plotlines straight in my head (which would gast all the flabbers of peak-long-covid-brain-fog me), I ended up setting The Lost Bookshop aside at that time because I didn't feel ready to be reading multiple books with one of them having three different POV characters in two timelines, deciding I'd wait until I'd finished the other books I was simultaneously reading so I could give The Lost Bookshop the proper attention—and savor it because it seemed right up my alley.

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

via Goodreads

As a reader and a writer, I'm a fan of books about bookshops and booksellers; my own Regency romance WIP, Bound to the Heart, is a prime example of that. Reading this synopsis about a magically disappearing bookshop and ordinary folks uncovering the extraordinary things about themselves through books felt like it was written for me.

In the year between picking up The Lost Bookshop while visiting a bookstore on vacation in Maine and starting it in earnest, I'd heard plenty of good things about it. A couple of bookish peeps on Instagram DMed me to say they loved it or wanted to read it as well when I'd posted it on my story. One of my friends asked to borrow it when I finished it because she'd heard promising things about it. It came up on several lists for books to gift writers that holiday season. It was even a clue in The Washington Post's crossword puzzle, which my coworkers and I either solve together or compete against each other to complete first, depending on the vibe.

I was looking oh so forward to what this book had in store. I thought it would be a new favorite.

"Nothing is as it seems" is frankly, sadly, how I would describe The Lost Bookshop.

The novel is marketed as magical realism, with elements of romance and mystery, perfect for book lovers. Its cover feels cozy. The prologue opens with a young boy visiting a bookshop, where the shopkeeper is telling him about its namesake, Opaline, which plays into that cozy feeling. We soon find out that the shopkeeper, Martha, is also a protagonist.

The Lost Bookshop is comprised of three narrators: Opaline's story set in the 1920s on, and Martha and Henry in the modern day.

Henry is a PhD student searching for a rumored second manuscript penned by Emily Brontë, and is the only one who I feel lines up with the blurb of The Lost Bookshop. At least from the onset, we'll get to that...

Despite the cozy vibes and good times promised by everything I'd seen and heard about The Lost Bookshop, it was actually pretty grim.

Opaline flees her abusive home to escape a marriage arranged by her brother*, Lyndon. Martha finds herself in Dublin after escaping an abusive marriage; in her first chapter, she is seen with a black eye. Henry, we later learn, grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father.

*More on that in a bit.

From here, I think it makes sense to discuss each protagonist's individual plotline in its own section.

Opaline

After leaving England, Opaline lands in France, where she secures a position at Shakespeare and Company, and falls in love with a fellow book dealer named Armand. Her brother tracks her down, forcing her to uproot her life and move to Ireland, where she eventually takes over the bookshop Henry is looking for in the modern day and finds a piece of what she realizes is the lost Brontë manuscript. Opaline and Armand are reunited by luck, and she eventually falls pregnant. Armand doesn't stick around, since he at that point was more interested in the manuscript. There's also the matter that he was presumably in a relationship with another woman, and it was unclear to me whether or not that was broken off.

Lyndon finds her again, and realizing she's pregnant, decides it needs to be taken care of. He abducts her and abandons her at an asylum. Opaline eventually gives birth there, and her daughter is whisked away; Opaline is told that she was stillborn.

Opaline does manage to escape the asylum and returns to the bookshop. She eventually learns about her brother's crimes during his time as a soldier and takes it upon herself to confront him. It is then revealed that she is not Lyndon's sister, but his daughter, after an affair with a French prostitute. Also, Opaline's daughter is alive and had been sold off to another family.

Back at the bookshop, Opaline resumes her life as a bookseller. She is also reconnected with an Austrian soldier she'd fallen for in the one chapter he appeared in, and they presumably live happily ever after.

Martha

After Martha's brief introduction in the prologue, we meet her as she is settling into her new job as a housekeeper for an old woman by the name of Madame Bowden. Part of her reason for accepting the position is fleeing from her abusive husband, Shane.

In Dublin, Martha is set on rebuilding her life. She decides to enroll in college and befriends Henry, who is convinced the lot next to the home is where a bookshop should be but isn't.

Peculiar things begin happening around her. New lines of text appear in the tattoo on her back. Books happen to land right in front of her, always the right one at the right time. And something about Madame Bowden seems off.

Shane eventually tracks her down and insists she return to England with him, going as far as to manipulate her with a lie that her mother has cancer. On another attempt to bring her back, Madame Bowden intervenes, and Shane (somehow) ends up dead. It's unclear as to how it happens, and Martha only questions it a little despite seeing the body. Madame Bowden sends her on an errand immediately after, and when Martha returns, it's as if nothing happened. Shane's body is pulled from a river sometime later. And, unless I'm missing something, it's hardly brought up again.

In part, because all Martha can do is think about this budding romance with Henry. Who, as it turns out, is engaged to someone else back home.

Following Shane's funeral, there is more conversation about the relationship between Martha's parents and the abuse her mother endured.

Meanwhile, Martha and Henry go through a bit of a rough patch (largely because he is engaged to someone else and didn't tell her), but they eventually make amends and live happily ever after.

Henry

Henry is the third protagonist in The Lost Bookshop, though his plotline isn't as relevant to what I want to address in this blog post. He is a PhD student searching for a manuscript by Emily Brontë that has been lost to time, which brings him to Dublin.

To be honest, Henry's POV was the one I felt most closely aligned with the blurb, as he is the one hunting down this disappearing bookshop, but he also seemed the most shoehorned in. A lot of his chapters felt extraneous, just there to maintain the pattern of Opaline-Martha-Henry, etc.

Like I mentioned above, Henry and Martha develop feelings for one another, though it's eventually revealed that he is engaged to another woman back home, which causes a rift between him and Martha. He promptly breaks things off with his fiancée (who takes it a little too well to be believed IMHO).

His cheating on his fiancée isn't addressed. The reconciliation between him and Martha didn't feel earned. Overall, he's just kind of there, which is a shame because the search for this lost bookshop and Brontë manuscript is what excited me the most about this book.

Henry also grew up with an alcoholic father, whom he eventually begins to forgive.

What was promised in The Lost Bookshop's blurb felt secondary. The magical and fantastical elements fall to the wayside, only brought back in full for the last couple of pages and handwaved away, while the discussions this book wants to have about the cycle of abuse felt surface-level.

It is revealed that Opaline's daughter is actually Martha's grandmother. I was anticipating a realization from Martha about the patterns of abusive relationships, from her own marriage to Shane to her parents' and, as is discovered, Opaline's family and relationships. I wanted that reckoning to be the key that allows her to take control of her own narrative. How quickly she jumped from Shane to Henry after the former's death, without taking time to sit with the gravity of these revelations, it felt like she was still dependent on men instead of growing into a woman of her own making. And let's not forget the man she jumped to after her abusive marriage is the one who cheated on his fiancée! I wanted this to be a conversation because I know so many people who have fallen into this pattern, who had to do so much more to find peace and heal from their trauma. Martha, for lack of a better term, basically just gets over it as if Shane had accidentally stood her up for lunch because he forgot to put the date in his calender rahter than physically, emotionally, and mentally abusing her for years.

Despite The Lost Bookshop being promoted as inspirational, these interwoven stories are bleak, and it doesn't take long for them to veer into what I called Chicken Soup for the Soul territory.

If you're unfamiliar, Chicken Soup for the Soul is a series of books featuring short memoirs and anecdotes aimed at readers looking for inspiration or uplifting pep talks, often rooted in faith. There are editions for basically every occasion you could possibly come up with and—for lack of a better term—every soul demographic including parents, brides, adopted children, nurses, Canadians, and chocolate lovers. My middle school language arts teacher adored this series and used selections for class readings. I'm pretty sure a relative gave me the pre-teen edition somewhere along the line. In the modern day, Chicken Soup for the Soul is still going strong with new releases, an official podcast, and even pet food.

(I need to not be the only one who knows there is Chicken Soup for the Soul-branded pet food, so I'm allowing myself this tangent.)

Chicken Soup for the Soul is often meant to be uplifting, but the segments I've read feel shallowly written. They don't dive too deep into the hard truths or really open up conversations with the audiences they're written for. And that's my issue with The Lost Bookshop. It wants to be this inspirational story about overcoming abuse, but it hardly scratches the surface. It doesn't do the work; in some ways, it dismisses it. Opaline's story especially feels like it can be summed up as This woman went through absolute hell and endured so much abuse, but then she started working at a bookshop and that helped her cope.

For what it's worth, I typically don't read reviews prior to picking up a new book. I save that for after I've finished the read or, like I talk about in this post, if I'm starting to think about DNFing and want to see if it's just me. Looking at the reviews for The Lost Bookshop, the majority on Goodreads are positive, but the negative ones cite pretty much every issue I had with it—including its marketing. How the book is grim and intense, and how those conflicts feel glossed over in the end. Mishandled. The men are all kind of pieces of shit, Henry included at times.

Adding to this, halfway through, I noticed the title on the Kindle edition had changed from The Lost Bookshop: A Novel to The Lost Bookshop: The most charming and uplifting novel for 2025 and the perfect gift for book lovers!. And THEN! As I'm drafting this post a week after finishing the book, the title in the app has been updated AGAIN to say 2026 (though in my browser it still says 2025). The description also starts with a promo for the author's next release, The Violin Maker's Secret, which kind of annoys me for reasons I can't exactly put my finger on.

It was not charming. It was not uplifting.

Would I be hating on it this much if the blurb had felt more aligned with the story itself? I don't think so. I doubt I would have enjoyed it, but I wouldn't be this disgruntled. It would have been one of those books where I finish it, shrug, and drop it off at my nearest Little Free Library without ceremony.

The fact that the blurb seemed to promise a cozy mystery vibe with a little romance and didn't deliver on that is what has me so irked.

As much as I wanted to love The Lost Bookshop, it sits at a 1.5/5 for me. If you've read it, share your thoughts in the comments.