THE LOST MANUSCRIPT BY Mollie Rushmeyer
POV : Ellora
MAIN CHARACTERS : Ellora, Alex, (Ellora & Alex are married, separated at start & most of the book), Lanae (Ellora’s best friend), Oscar (Alex’s friend), and Grandma June (who we read about all throughout the book).
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I really liked this book. Ellora and Alex are a husband and wife team(though not too much of a team starting out) of historians who love hunting for old history relics and teaching about them to others. Ellora’s Grandma June has disappeared looking for an old, historical, beautiful manuscript. And Ellora, Alex, Lanae, and Oscar are all trying to find out what happened and find Grandma June and the manuscript, too, at the same time. There’s lots of many near death happenings throughout that adds some action to it. But the love between Alex and Ellora will get you every time. Beautiful and exciting book from Mollie Rushmeyer! I want to thank #NetGalley and the publishers, and author for the opportunity to read and review #TheLostManuscript with my honest thoughts and opinions.

In The Lost Manuscript Ellie is given the opportunity to teach summer school in England while reuniting with her estranged husband, and to pick up the search for an ancient manuscript that lead to the disappearance of her grandmother. This book is full of mystery, suspense, and history, and romance. They mystery and suspense is really well written. The end felt just a tad rushed, trying to wrap everything up, but I really enjoyed the process of looking for the lost manuscript. There is a ton of really interesting history written within the pages. And the romance was pretty sweet. A few times I felt myself annoyed with Ellie and her inability to forgive Alex. Especially her thought process around whether or not to get divorced. But I enjoyed Alex's process of learning to forgive himself and realizing he expects too much from himself. All in all I enjoyed this story and the mystery surrounding The Lost Manuscript!

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

This book did not turn out as I expected. There was a mystery element involving the titular Lost Manuscript that turned out to be the most fun aspect of the book. Following the historical clues was fun and had me wanting to visit England! The main relationship fell kind of flat, however. From the get go their separation didn’t make much sense, and you could tell right away that everything would be fine. This title is perfect for senior clients who like family stories, and gentle reads.

Love the adventure of looking life an ancient lost manuscript! Historian Aunt June disappears while searching for a stunning religious book illustrated in with Lapis lazuli. She leaves clues for her beloved niece, Ellore also a historian, to continue the search. Ellore is grieving the unknown wears-bouts of her Aunt and the seemingly end of her marriage. The search for Aunt June and the lost manuscript brings her back to England and to a recking with her estranged husband. The book has many faith based elements regarding following Gods path vs our own and the commitment to marriage. Ellore and Alex struggle together to solve the above mysteries while examining the failed attempts to communicate in their marriage. Hod has the answers for both. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

The Lost Manuscript is a bit of an uneven novel with two stories vying for top billing. It can't decide if it wants to be an adventure tale about a missing treasure or a second chance romance. The characters are likeable though I felt at times the author was trying too hard to sound British. The treasure is a 1200 year-old illuminated manuscript, and a lot (maybe too much) of the book focuses on the history.

This is Christian fiction, and the characters spend time praying and discussing God.

Overall, this is a good book that could have been better.

Family friendly but some topics may be too much for young readers. Contains several discussions on miscarriage.

I just reviewed The Lost Manuscript by Mollie Rushmeyer. #TheLostManuscript #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL] August 29 I’m not exactly the right person to review this book since I now realize that history is not my jam, like it is for Molly. I will warmly say that this book is as enjoyable as reading a nice book in a sunny window with a lovely cuppa tea. There is brokenness, heartbreak, mystery, redemption and the true love of sharing God’s love with the one you love…and treasure.

This is a read that keeps you on your toes, yes, there is danger here. Ellora is heading to England as this book opens, her beloved Grandmother is missing, and her soon to be ex husband, but with her heart in her hand she lands taking a summer teaching job, looking for her Grandmother, and also trying to solve the mystery of the lost manuscript that her Grandmother was seeking.

As we quickly become immersed in the English countryside, and meeting Alex, and see that there are still sparks with this broken relationship, and we are off to try and solve the puzzle of the missing manuscript and find June.

I loved how each of the puzzles are worked out in this journey, and clues that are left, but then there is also danger, and you'll find yourself ducking from projectiles, most you will never see coming.

We are offered some sweet romance, along with a long held mystery, one that dated back to Henry VIII, and new friendships. This is a Christian read, and I enjoyed that these are people of faith!

I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Harlequin, and was not required to give a positive review.

The Lost Manuscript was a good story. It was a little hard to follow at times (perhaps that was the children running around my house!) But overall it was a good book. I have not read the first book by Mollie Rushmeyer but I definitely will now.
This story had intrigue, suspense, and love (But not in your typical fashion!) In fact, I actually preferred this type of love story!
I look forward to reading more by her in the future and seeing her grow as an author.

I love Indiana Jones, so I was looking forward to this book. Sadly, it didn't work for me. I thought the premise sounded interesting, but the execution was very confusing. I really didn't care for the main character. Dialogue was very repetitive. I had a hard time getting pulled into the storyline, and I never fully engaged with it. It felt more like a YA book than adult fiction. There is a Christian element, but it felt like it was thrown in as an afterthought vs. woven in organically. It just seemed awkward. While it was supposed to take place in England, it felt more like the US. Characters were one-dimensional. Some readers might appreciate a trigger warning (miscarriage and divorce). Things seemed to wrap up too neatly. Nothing about this story will stick with me now that I've put it aside.

I found the book to be very confusing and hard to get into, its not really my cup of tea. The storyline drew me in from the draft but it fell flat for me.

A mysterious treasure hunt for a historical manuscript meets a second chance romance in The Lost Manuscript” by Mollie Rushmeyer.
I really enjoyed the treasure hunt aspects of this tale. The clues and the historical storyline were very interesting and kept me reading.
However, some of the modern personal storyline seemed very repetitive and predictable. I found that for the majority of the book the main character was quite self-absorbed. Yes, she did experience a great deal of hardship, but her outlook was only how it effected her and everything she did was validated because she figured that she was the one that hurting the most. Her character just wasn’t for me.
Overall, this book was just okay. The repetitive nature of the inner dialogue and even the circular conversations made it difficult for me to truly dive into the book until well after 120 pages.

Thank you NetGalley and Harlequin for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Lost Manuscript is a romantic historical treasure hunt. A mystery with a missing person that leads to the discovery of a long lost manuscript.

Ellora Lockwood and her estranged husband Alex join together to search for her grandmother, who mysteriously disappeared while searching for the manuscript. While on this journey, they decide whether their marriage was worth fighting for. With all the hurts and misunderstandings, there is an element of faith as Ellie finds that God has taken her grief and given her joy alongside with her grief.

The secondary characters were good companions to the story. They added much to the filling out of the main characters.

Although the story starts out slow, it picks up as their adventure takes them along the English countryside of Alnwick England. There is the element of hope and second chances. A good clean read.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I enjoyed this book. It was a sort of a historical treasure hunt adventure combined with romance. Ellora's grandmother was on the trail of a missing manuscript when she disappeared. Now Ellora has journeyed to England to follow the clues her grandmother left for her. In the process she reconnects with her estranged husband. I had to suspend some of my "historian" bias to fully engage - not because of the women in history in aspect but because of a preservation aspect.
This is a review of an ARC provided by NetGalley.

This book is may be better suited for a YA fiction category, but as an adult fiction, it just does not add up. It is readable, and it does have a lot of action to keep the story moving, but it would be easier to remove some of the adult themes than to rewrite the whole book for an adult audience. I had a hard time with the willing suspension of disbelief needed to properly enjoy this book.

The Christian themes throughout the book seemed to be smeared on as an afterthought— It was so awkward and honestly, the Christianese came out at the most random times and was so overdone in those select places as to make the characters and the book unbelievable.

The setting is supposedly in England, but I don’t think the plane landed in England. It never left the Midwest of the USA. The dialogue sounded like what an American girl dreams of when she thinks of marrying a Brit and living happily ever after, and outside of calling everyone “love” that was the only real addition the author attributed to his Englishness. In many places the lack of Englishness was a detraction— there was no profanity (which was nice, but perhaps not English), and neither was there any proper refinement of the characters to lead you to believe them gentile. The husbands mother was supposedly a hard woman who convinced her son he should never have children because of how awful she was to him after her older sons death. And in the one scene where she shows up unexpectedly, she asks her son and his wife in front of people she doesn’t know when they were going to be having babies as she’d soon be too old to enjoy them after pointedly calling them both out for being on the verge of divorce… I cannot see this kind of rude and ghastly behavior occurring anywhere in Britain. I know it happens in the USA, but the British disdain for the unrefined is legendary. If it happened at all it would certainly not happen anywhere public and at the sons place of work. They then invite themselves over for dinner which the protagonist abruptly determines that she will cook (when she apparently can’t even boil water) and we have a whole chapter of a dinner party gone awry.

The character development was also unbelievable. The whole premise of the story was hard to believe. The book opens up in Minnesota where a young woman is in the process of selling her house that she lived in with her husband for four years before a tragic accident occurred in which he had a hard time due to his past trauma, and she had a hard time because she had experienced a miscarriage. This was the catalyst for the husband, Alex, to take a job and move back to England without his wife… he lives there for 7mo before calling her up and offering to hire her for a summer program because he needs an expert on British history which she has her doctorate in. He also throws in that he’s already hired her best friend to be a student advisor so come on over and it’ll be a party. Also also, her grandmother lived and worked there before she mysteriously went missing and she left a scavenger hunt for them both to follow together. She decides to go for just the summer to work out her grandmothers scavenger hunt and to get the divorce papers she sent over. The way all the characters interact together and reason and think and speak, they are more like college kids play acting in adult roles. The college students they are teaching act more like high school aged kids than college students. It’s bizarre. It almost feels like because the author was writing a novel that was in the Christian genre and that it would be entirely rated PG, the adults couldn’t think like adults because if they did, who knows what two married adults might do in Britain. The thing is, I wasn’t looking for the adults to consummate marriage or anything, I was truly just looking for them to think like adults and not like teenagers. I have nothing against teenagers and the way they think and had this been a YA read, I’d have been content. But we have adult themes of rocky marriage and miscarriage and divorce, and the main players are hardly acting more than 18yrs old when they are supposed to be mid 30s. It’s hard to reconcile. The characters were so one dimensional. I can’t see there was any growth at all.

The plot was predictable like a hallmark movie which is good in cases where you are invested in the characters and you believe in them… in instances where it’s hard to fall into step with a book, it’s boring. I wasn’t disappointed with the way it ended, but the epilogue tied things together way too neatly for the amount of damage control and growth the characters were allowed to accomplish throughout the book. Additionally, I read all 360pages and while it was readable, I still can’t tell you what it was about this list manuscript that had them searching for it and being willing to die for it. I can’t tell you why a grandmother would ask her granddaughter to come and risk dying for it. I don’t follow why people would be willing to kill for it because I was never allowed to properly get invested into the idea of this lost manuscript and why it was important to the world at large. I knew the characters were on a quest to find it, but I wasn’t invited along as the reader and it was hard to care about the end goal. I still have no idea. There was way too much going on and not enough development of ideas in order to really track with it all. When the book stalled, like magic, a new clue appears and they are able to follow it like breadcrumbs. But the reader wasn’t always able to follow the breadcrumbs, the reader was forced to blindly believe… and truthfully, that was hard to do because as I’ve said, it’s all so unbelievable. And I wasn’t without the desire to believe. Again, as a teenager, I’d have loved this book. As an adult, not so much.

A special thanks to Harlequin and NetGalley for the eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I didn't realize this book had a religious theme, but it does explain the characters decision making and motivation to find this priceless manuscript. The characters were well drawn and the mystery aspect made it exciting to read.

The Lost Manuscript is my first read by Mollie Rushmeyer. Contemporary fiction with romantic and suspense threads, along with a missing person, made for an intriguing story.

Ellora Lockwood, a medieval history professor and expert, feels adrift after her grandmother disappears and her estranged husband, Alex, moves to England without her. When Alex almost begs her to take a summer teaching position in Alnwick, England, teaching in an exchange program he oversees, Ellora reluctantly says yes when she learns there may be new information pertaining to her beloved missing grandmother.

While in England, she and Alex begin to uncover clues about a priceless manuscript her grandmother had been searching for. As Ellora and Alex put the clues together, pieces of their own lives are also revealed. But they aren’t the only ones on the search for the ancient artifact. And, if Ellora continues the quest, will her life be endangered?

Set in the beautiful English countryside, historical settings and facts wove through and deepened the story in a creative and poignant way. This countryside also created its own peril in the hunt for the lost manuscript. Mollie Rushmeyer had a way of crafting fun and unexpected happenings that drew me and kept me reading.

The secondary characters add depth and fun to The Lost Manuscript. They added humor and truth to the main characters.

I appreciated how Ellora and Alex struggled with their pasts, with previous decisions, and the wrong beliefs they had. They each had to come to terms with these things and learn how to live in a more healed way.

The themes in this story include second chances, learning to trust, and the importance of honesty in relationships.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. There were a couple of situations where I felt one character’s reaction was unreasonable, and that didn’t sit well with me. That said, I found myself thinking about this story, even when I wasn’t reading it. It wasn’t predictable, and it was a fascinating read.

If you enjoy intrigue, history, and redemption in relationships, you will love this story.

***My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. I was not required to share a positive review. All opinions are my own.

With the race on to find the Lost Manuscript of Lindisfarne, Ellora and Alex must work together to locate it before nefarious people find it and sell it. The setting of the castle in Alnwick, England was a great backdrop for the story.

I enjoyed the clues and the hunt for the manuscript. However, I didn’t feel as invested in this book as I had hoped since I thought both Ellora and Alex were selfish and had a hard time putting their hurts and misunderstandings aside. I felt their relationship was strained and detracted from the story.

I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. A positive review was not required.

This was a good book of love , loss and mystery but in some parts it was a little sappy for me but overall was an engaging story.
Thanks to Netgalley for letting me read this book

The Lost Manuscript is a romantic mystery. While I found the story line ok, I didn’t really connect to any of the characters. Ellora travels to England to search for a lost manuscript that her grandmother had been searching for before she disappeared. Helping her is her estranged husband and best friend.

One of the things I appreciate about this author most is her love for books and reading and knowledge and it comes across in every book I’ve read of hers so far. I did get lost in some of the history and timelines, but the overall story was really interesting. I thought I saw the bad guy coming and I don’t want to spoil it here but I wouldn’t say it was predictable. When you read a lot, you learn to expect the non-obvious at times. I did feel like some of the spiritual stuff was a but gorced in some of the chapters and it could’ve just been sprinkled in so if you’re not big on Christian storylines being pushed, you may not enjoy this, but I did enjoy that this was a clean read and I didn’t have to skim over any language or intimate scenes. Four stars from me.