If I’m honest, I decided to read this book based on the fact that it has a bookcase on the cover and is about a woman who moves into an old cottage and finds letters. That’s all it took. I didn’t even know until I was about a third of the way into it that it was a romance. Which wasn’t really what I was hoping for, and didn’t really improve the book for me. But let’s take a step back and start at the beginning.
The Lost Letters of Evelyn Wright is the story of Beth, a newly-single mother who has been forced out of her beloved home by her jerk of an ex-husband, Rob. He’s now living there with the woman he cheated on Beth with, and to add insult to injury, the only place Beth could afford is a run-down cottage in a village a ways away from her kids’ school and friends, where her kids, Olivia and Jacob, will have to share a room. When we meet her, she’s mostly feeling sorry for herself and depressed with her new surroundings.
But once she moves into the cottage and starts putting in work to clean it up and refresh it, she discovers a pile of letters written to someone called Evelyn. It appears that Evelyn used to live in the cottage and wrote agony aunt letters in response to strangers’ pleas for help with a variety of (deeply) personal problems. Beth begins reading these, and is struck by the advice from one letter that seems to fit her own situation. Evelyn advises a lonely writer to get a dog – not only for company in their home, but so that they can meet other people when they take the dog for a walk. Beth takes this advice, and because of it she makes a new friend. Catherine is out walking her dog and ends up sitting for a rest on the same bench as Beth. The two start chatting and strike up a friendship. Catherine is assertive and goes after whatever she wants. She wants Beth to be her friend. And so she is.
I think the very best part of this entire book for me was Catherine. I loved her no-nonsense attitude, her slightly cynical but also funny take on life, her dismissal of past relationships as unimportant because she had built a life for herself in which she was much happier. I even liked the stubbornness in her that nearly stops her from finding out some important information about her own family, but her ability to change a bit. To open up, no matter that it’s hard, and to let people in. I felt like she was the character from the book I would most want to spend time with. She’s fierce, protective of her friends, won’t hesitate to give a push where it’s needed, or call bullshit on bad decisions. She is, in short, exactly the type of person we all need in our lives.
Beth, on the other hand, I had a harder time with. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that she is a bit of a wallflower. I get this. Being cheated on and ending up with the short end of the stick after the separation and watching your kids slip further away because they like the house their dad lives in better than the one you can afford would be bloody hard. It’s also, however, not a ton of fun to read most of a book about. So that was a bit challenging. She also ends up having feelings for a man who is married. His relationship is in trouble, but still. If you’ve been hurt by infidelity in your life, especially if it was your partner who did it, you do not turn around and do the same thing, no matter how complicated the other person’s relationship seems to be. It’s just not cool. So that part was hard for me to take, and it made it impossible for me to become invested in the outcome of that particular situation.
Beth does have some character development – by the end of the book she’s not as miserable, she’s starting to find ways to take back control in her life and for her kids, and she’s made the ramshackle cottage into a place that is not only much prettier, but feels like home. She now has people around her who genuinely support and care about her, and we all know how important that is in a healthy life. All of this is satisfying in its own way. If it weren’t for the 3/4 of the book that’s difficult and the married man fiasco. And this isn’t even going into the absurdity of Beth giving out advice online to people when she’s basically a car wreck with terrible judgment.
At the end of the day, I didn’t hate this book, but I also definitely didn’t love it. The themes of friendship and self re-invention were great. The rest was….. well, not. I don’t think I’d recommend it highly, nor will I re-read it in the future – but I liked enough elements that I would be willing to try a different book by this author with a different type of plot and characters. It showed promise.
Starting over can be hard to do… So when mum of two Beth moves out of her beloved marital home and into an unloved and unkempt cottage, she can’t help but feel demoralised. Faced with months of DIY and dust, her children Jacob and Olivia aren’t impressed either. But when Beth finds a box of letters while she’s clearing out the children’s room, things start to look up.
The correspondence is decades old, between agony aunt Evelyn and those in need of solace. Intrigued as to why the letters have been kept safe all these years, Beth can’t resist reading them, and as the wisdom and kindness of Evelyn falls off the pages, so Beth starts to feel she has a friend and champion in this woman she has never met.
Good advice doesn’t age, and as life starts to look brighter, Beth begins to wonder if she could track down Evelyn and thank her for her help. But as Beth uncovers more about Evelyn’s story, it becomes clear that everything is not as it seems. And now Beth is determined to bring peace to Evelyn as she has to her.
A spell-binding, heart-warming story of friendship, love and being brave enough to be yourself. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Lost Letters of Evelyn Wright
Author: Clare Swatman
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: Boldwood Books Ltd.
Released: February 15, 2024
Genre: Fiction, Family, Infidelity, Divorce, Romance
Pages: 506
Date Read: February 16-17, 2024
Rating: 5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.93/5 (161 ratings)
