My Thoughts
I was asked to participate in the blog tour for this book and, as a fan of Phaedra Patrick’s previous novels, I was keen to join in. Here are my pros and cons for The Secrets of Love Story Bridge:

Pros

1. I really enjoy contemporary romance novels written from a man’s POV. This book was no exception. Mitchell, widower and single dad, is a charming and engaging character even though he is struggling with grief, guilt and loneliness. You almost can’t help but connect with him, in part because you will find yourself wanting to help him.
2. Phaedra Patrick writes mature romance – at least that is how I would describe her books. She writes about real people with real problems who happen to connect with other real people with real problems. Her characters are often older and her lead characters are frequently men. Throughout this particular book we get the privilege of observing the unlikely connection between two adults grow. The romance/relationship in this book isn’t mushy, it isn’t raunchy, it isn’t erotic, and it isn’t even steamy… and I appreciate that. Patrick writes relationships that are realistic, honest, and solid.
3. Poppy, Mitchell’s daughter, was also a great character. She seemed a bit wise beyond her years, but sometimes kids are that way after experiencing tragedy. The relationship between Poppy and her Dad was endearing and well-written.
4. I thought the exploration of grief, guilt, and loneliness was well done. Mitchell had many things he had to work through in order to “move on” with his life. Letting go of the past is probably one of the hardest things a human has to do in life. I thought the feelings Mitchell had (good and bad) and actions he took to address his feelings (good and bad) were honest and realistic.
5. I thought Mitchell’s reaction to being considered a “hero” was unique. At least I didn’t expect it.
6. The use of the locks and subsequent written love stories was a unique and creative way to tell this story.
7. The pacing of the novel is really good. I read it in a day.

Cons

1. I don’t love the title. To me the title is cutesy and I would never describe this book as cutesy.
2. The secondary story in the book (the woman on the bridge) was interesting… until it was resolved. Considering the drama and tension of the woman’s situation, the resolution felt rushed and unrealistic.

Summary
Phaedra Patrick’s books are often described as heartwarming… because they are. This book is definitely heartwarming. It was also charming and funny and uplifting and hopeful. I would recommend any of her books to anyone that enjoys a solid love story.

Thank you NetGalley and Park Row Books for a free eARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Secrets of Love Bridge was an unexpected surprise. The story involves Mitchell, a widower, who has been grieving for Ania for three years while trying to raise his daughter alone. When I started the book, I was sure it I was going to like it. I quickly found myself sucked into Mitchell's story and his journey through grief.

Mitchell had been numb for the past three years. After he saved a women, Yvette, who fell over the bridge he was working on, the veil over his emotions slowly begins to lift. He ends up helping Liza, (the woman's sister) track her down after she vaishes again. I won't tell you what happened to Yvette, you'll have to read for yourself.

What I loved about the book was the relationship between Mitchell and his daughter, Poppy,as well as Mitchell and Liza. She brings light into his world again. It was such a joy to watch as he realizes that life has to move forward and that is OK. The letters from the people who have left locks on the bridge were heartwarming and sad at the same time. I loved how they played a part in helping Mitchell heal. The speech at the end of the book was perfect. My favorite line: "I think that true love is simply your way of being together, in a way that makes you both happy". So true! I highly recommend this one!

When I started this book, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it much, considering the main character is a single dad and a rather curmudgeonly one, at that. Even when Mitchell saves the life of the young woman on the bridge, his personality didn't improve much.



However when his daughter's music teacher happens to be the woman's sister, he really gets wrapped up in trying to find out more of the mysterious woman in yellow, also known as Yvette.



This is where the story starts taking off, because the somewhat cynical Mitchell, who was overworked and very regimented starts to get his world shaken up by Liza and her family. The quest to find out where Yvette is, changes his life in so many ways, and its really easy to see that these changes are for the better. Mitchell becomes more human and more open to romance.



When I first started this book, I thought this book was going to be a romance novel or something a little bit in the hearts and flowers vein, but it was more than that. It was the mystery of Yvette and the secrets that she kept. It was the bridge with all the locks and their message of love. It was the letters, written to Mitchell sharing their stories.



I loved seeing Mitchell change as the book progresses. I loved learning about his relationship with his partner Anita, who was killed in an accident several years before.



The real star of this book is Poppy, his daughter. It really is a great thing when a child is a real character in a book and not just a plot device to move things along in the story. Poppy is just wonderfully refreshing and a bright child. Yes, she helped move the story along but she helped her dad grow as a person and maybe she even helped him see his feelings were growing when it came to Liza.



This was really a delightful read.

Mitchell Fisher is a father who gave up his career as an architect to raise his young daughter Poppy after the death of her mother. He now works for the county cutting locks off the famous “love story bridge”. One day as he is working, he sees a young woman fall off the bridge and jumps in to save her. He becomes curious as to who this woman was and what happened to her.

Liza is the sister of the woman who fell off the bridge, and is drawn to Mitchell as he was the only one to have seen her sister since she went missing almost a year ago. Together they start piecing together her story from what she wrote on the lock she placed on the bridge.

I loved this sweet story of Mitchell, Liza and Poppy as they grow closer together. It was a budding romance along with a well written mystery that keeps you wanting to find out what happened. I loved the letters that Mitchell receives from people when he becomes quite the hero after saving the young woman in the yellow dress. The author developed the characters beautifully and I loved how the book ended. Thank you so much to the author Phaedra Patrick, Harlequin and NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book to read and review.

I fell in love with Mitchell almost immediately, and not even in my next book boyfriend way it was more of a I want to take care of this person way. He is barely holding on by a thread and can’t even see it. While this book does revolve around him trying to find the mysterious girl on the bridge, it is all about Mitchell and him discovering that he is so deeply still grieving his partner. Everything that he has done up until now may not have been healing him and his daughter like he thought it was. Poppy his daughter was a sort of light in the darkness in the book. I do have to say the only thing I didn’t like is she is to be 9 years old and I know kids mentally grow in different stages, her grammar and mannerisms were more of a 11 year old. That being said everything else about his daughter was absolutely delightful. Mitchell does evolve throughout the book and takes us on quite an emotional ride with him. Everyone he meets or interacts with seems to have a story to tell or something to teach him.

I don’t want to say to much more about to many characters, but the front desk man Carl was a delight. I could have a whole book on him and be fine with it. This whole book just flowed for me, if I wouldn’t have had work and kids I probably would’ve just sat and read the whole thing. The idea of people writing letters to one another and telling their stories is such an interesting thought. In our household we actually still write letters and send cards but I wonder how many other households do that? Do people still do Pen Pals?

Thank you to Phaedra Patrick, Park Row Books, and NetGalley for a copy in lieu of a copy for my honest review.

I am a huge fan of Phaedra! She is an amazing writer so I was beyond excited to read The Secrets of Love Story Bridge! I don’t like to play favorites but I think this is my favorite book by Phaedra! This father daughter tale spoke to my heart. I literally was unable to put this moving book down. Phaedra is an amazing writing and one of my favorite writers of all time!

This is such a hopeful book. Even while the main character, Mitchell, is grieving the loss of his love and the mother of his daughter, he is finding everything in his organized life turned topsy-turvy once he jumps off the bridge to save the woman.

More than a grief book or a book about an unexpected hero, this book is about being a good human and helping other good humans be better together. It's poignant to read during the quarantine and its craziness in the spring of 2020.

I’ve really enjoyed reading Phaedra Patrick's novels over the past several months. Sweet and hopeful, The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is the perfect book for this time when we are longing for deeper connections while also learning to handle our grief. Highly recommended.

(PS: Write someone an encouraging letter on paper and mail it.)

It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last as I loved it.
It's not one of those book that make you fell in love after the first pages, it took a couple of chapter and when the story started going I was hooked.
This is a character driven story and I loved the great job the author did in making her character evolve and change.
The story is sweet, engrossing, heartwarming and heart wrenching at the same time. There is a lot of grief and a path to overcome it, there are characters who were hurt and heal facing their sufferance and going on with their life.
It's a book that talks about life, family, friendship, love and how all of them help us to live and evolve.
It was an excellent read, I strongly recommend it.
Many thanks to Park Row and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I have loved Phaedra Patrick books since I picked my first one up a few years ago. This beautiful love story really tasks you with remembering to enjoy life and not get so caught up in schedules and have to's. It is also a tribute to letter writing which is becoming a lost art, especially in the time of email and e-cards. How many people take the time to send a card, note or something hand written instead of a quick facebook post or e-card? I remember writing letters to my mother from camp, nowadays many sleep away camps use email for kids to communicate with their parents, its sad and impersonal.

Mitchell is stuck in a rut, his girl friend has died and now he is raising their young daughter alone. He has moved to the city to be closer to work but his life is lacking passion. It revolves around schedules and plans. His current job is cutting the locks off of the bridges so the weight of them don't collapse the bridge, when he sees a young woman attach a lock and then fall into the water below. Not thinking he jumps in after to save her and this one "leap of faith" changes his life. He discovers she has been missing for almost a year and her sisters and mother have been missing her terribly. With the aid of his daughter, and a nosey reporter who wrote an article on his heroism his life is changed. He starts feeling again, remembering what it is like to live instead of exist. The reporter encourages people to write to him about their story with the bridges and he finds himself swarmed with letters telling moving stories about their lives and loves.

Beautifully written as usual this story reminds us all to not be so serious, to play, look up at the stars, and feel. Maybe this time of quarantine is our bridge, how are you going to change your life?

The secrets of Love story bridge by Phaedra Patrick was just the sort of book I needed right now! Mitchell went from designing a bridge, to spending his days cutting padlocks off of them, left by tons of lovers. A single father, hates all things romantic, and only his daughter Poppy knows how he is still grieving. the loss of his wife. One day changes his life when he jumps off the bridge to save a woman, who disappears after being saved.. Heralded as the "Hero on the bridge" by a budding reporter, Mitchell becomes the latest online sensation, when the reporter comes up with a letter writing contest. Can Mitchell get a 2nd chance at love while helping Liza find her missing sister? This was my 2nd Phaedra Patrick book and I adored it just as much as The library of lost and found. Mitchell was a character I not only loved, but understood. You could see him, a broken, grieving and at times bitter man, but a loving father to Poppy, and at times still have those moments when you saw the original Mitchell. You saw him change back throughout the story, especially when he remembers his old friend. This is a fabulous heartwarming story, and I highly recommend it! Thank you Netgalley and Park Row for the advanced copy.

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge greatly improves upon the last Phaedra Patrick novel I tried out.  Perhaps she enjoys a better mastery of the masculine perspective, or maybe this particular set of characters resonated more for her, but a sense of warmth cuts through the treacle, making it a pleasant and sweet read.

Mitchell Fisher has long since rejected love. Hammered by soul-deep guilt over the death of his wife Anita he satisfies himself with parenting their nine-year-old daughter, Poppy and nightly writing letters to his wife’s ghost.  Mitchell regrets how focused he was on his work, and that he didn’t spend enough time with Anita and Poppy before the event that claimed Anita’s life.

Mitchell also relishes his job – though once he was an engineer building bridges, now he’s assigned to bolt cut the padlocks attached to the titular bridge in Upchester. Said bridge has become a popular site for young lovers since the boy band Word Up used it as a location in one of their music videos, and Mitchell grumpily chops through the steel and iron left behind by young fans, even as he faces down defiant and in-love young people who want to attach their locks unto immortality.

While working at the site one day, he comes upon a woman clamping a love lock to the bridge, who moves too close to the railing and accidentally tumbles into the river below.  Mitchell dives in and rescues her, and in the brief time they have together before the medical professionals sweep them apart, he feels a connection to a woman for the first time since Anita. He passes out from the exertion of the rescue, and when he regains consciousness, she’s disappeared. The media intervenes, the story goes viral, and soon Mitchell has a name for the woman – Yvette Bradfield.

It turns out that Yvette had been missing for a year before the incident on the bridge.  Yvette’s sister Liza is happy Yvette’s been spotted, but she wants to investigate Yvette’s lost time and find her again.  Liza, Mitchell and Poppy team up together to solve the mystery, and along the way Mitchell’s attraction to the chatty, colorful, pop music loving Liza grows – and so do Mitchell’s attempts at engaging with the outside world.  Road trips, day trips and nights spent with Liza encourage Mitchell to reach out.  But what will Yvette truly be like when she’s been tracked down, and what secret is she hiding?

I’m grading The Secrets of Love Story Bridge as highly as I am mainly because of the beauty of Mitchell’s story.  Watching him regain his ability to love, to have friendships, to interact with his daughter while letting her experience the world outside of their door, is a wonderful journey to follow him on.  His relationship with Poppy is one of the best father and daughter relationships I’ve read thus far this year.

The supporting characters are good too. Liza is original and interesting, Mitchell’s playboy friend Barry is amusing, and Yvette is appropriately sympathetic when she arrives in the narrative as a proper character.

Poppy is special all by herself, and is an incredibly original child who comes off as a realistic nine-year-old. The book does a good job of exploring her bond with Mitchell and her developing friendship with Liza.

Liza and Mitchell’s relationship – revolving as it does around music – is also delightful.

But the unoriginality of Yvette’s plotline bothers me. For all of the mystery surrounding her, the reason why she disappeared is pat and disappointingly trite, and knocks the book down several notches.

There’s a lovely sub-plot where Mitchell uses his fame to ask people to tell him their stories about the love locks at the bridge, and gets a variety of letters back.  These letters are well-written and thought out, and add to the romance of the story.

Overall, The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is a moving story with beautiful character work that outweigh the novel's faults and make it a worthwhile read.

Buy it at: Amazon : Audible : your local independent bookstore
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Bridges. The bridges are a main character in this story – not only a bridge from one riverbank to another, but those bridges between past and present, yesterday and tomorrow, between two people separated or newly found. And Mitchell is at the center of the bridges, literally and figuratively as he works through his new ‘normal’ after the loss of his partner Anita, and how to move forward and do the best for his daughter, Poppy. Poppy knows that her father is grieving and sad- it makes him grumpy with everyone but her, and she’d like nothing more than to see him happy. But for Mitchell, his work is steadily reminding him of what he’s lost: removing random padlocks from bridges, placed by lovers with keys tossed into the water. He’s never been a fan of the tradition: it damages the bridges he so carefully designed and loves, but to have that combined with the blow to his heart with each engraved lock is just too much. He retreats into a ‘no feeling zone’, showing his displeasure in his demeanor, keeping everyone at arm’s length.

Until he reacts rather than thinks and saves a woman from drowning after jumping off the bridge. The attention made him uncomfortable, and he was more concerned than he realized. But never having gotten the woman’s name, he’s at a loss. Serendipity raises its head, and we learn that Poppy’s music teacher Liza is the woman’s sister, and she’d been missing for a year. Soon, Mitchell is drawn into helping Liza find her sister Yvette, and their connection is solid and clever. From the story in the news, many letters arrived, some heartbreaking, others to tell a ‘story’ of the rescue- all clever and adding plenty to the moments.

Mitchell, without even realizing it, is changing and becoming a better version of himself, growing and changing, able to work through his grief and show the world the man that Poppy knew he always was. His interactions with her, and her quiet (and not so) insertions into the story with that simplicity of reasoning that all children have was delightful and she stole the show every moment she was there. The letters, Liza, the other characters we meet and learn from, and the growth that Mitchell experiences while again redefining his life as a parent and a man, along with the child-heavy moments with Poppy provide a lovely story that is full of emotion and a small example of moving forward when circumstances change. My first book from Phaedra Patrick, it won’t be the last.

I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

Review first appeared at <a href=” https://wp.me/p3OmRo-aGR/” > <a> I am, Indeed </a>

*** Blog Tour ***

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge by Phaedra Patrick begins with a crisis. Of course, there is a love story - several, in fact. They are sweet and clean and focus on the emotions of the relationships. A story that begins in crisis and sadness ends up a sweet, feel-good read with characters who make me smile. The aspect of this story that I truly love is the letters!

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/05/the-secrets-of-love-story-bridge.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

As a pre-existing Phaedra Patrick fan, I think The Secrets of Love Story Bridge might be my favorite novel of hers! A charming, heartwarming father daughter tale sprinkled with love, letters, locks, local history, and a pinch of a mystery. This is a great one to recommend to Phaedra Patrick's style and don't know which one to start with.

Title: The Secrets of Love Story Bridge
Author: Phaedra Patrick
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5

Single father Mitchell Fisher hates all things romance. He enjoys his job removing padlocks fastened to the famous "love lock" bridges of Upchester city. Only his young daughter, Poppy, knows that behind his disciplined veneer, Mitchell grieves the loss of her mother, Anita.

One fateful day, working on the bridge, Mitchell courageously rescues a woman who falls into the river. He’s surprised to feel a connection to her, but the woman disappears before he learns her name. To Mitchell’s shock, a video of the rescue goes viral, hailing him as "The Hero on the Bridge." He’s soon notified by the mysterious woman’s sister, Liza, that she has been missing for over a year. However, the only clue to where the woman could have gone is the engraved padlock she left on the bridge.

Mitchell finds himself swept up in Liza’s quest to find her lost sister. Along the way, with help from a sparkling cast of characters, Mitchell’s heart gradually unlocks, and he discovers new beginnings can be found in the unlikeliest places...

This seems like a simple story, but there’s a lot going on here. The pacing is slow and steady, which just works for this story. There’s a bit of mystery with the missing woman and her story, sadness and grief over Mitchell’s lost love, and also hope for the future. Not every story needs a fast pace to keep a reader engrossed. Sometimes, savoring a novel like this one is just as enthralling.

Phaedra Patrick studied art and marketing, and has worked as a stained-glass artist, film festival organizer and communications manager. An award-winning short story writer, she now writes full-time. She lives in Saddleworth, UK, with her husband and son. The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/Park Row in exchange for an honest review.)

Quirky and charming. Phaedra Patrick has written another heartwarming feel good story. Mitchell no longer believes in romance, not after the loss of his beloved wife. He spends his days happily removing padlocks from bridges that people have left to express their love. Mitchell keeps his young daughter’s and his life regimented and structured. Then one day A woman in a yellow dress falls from the bridge and Mitchell jumps in to rescue her. He feels a connection between himself and the woman, but fails to get her name. In a strange coincidence it turns out that the woman is the sister of his daughter Poppy’s music teacher Liza, and she has been missing for over a year. Intrigued Mitchell decides to help Liza find her sister and in doing so he finds a better version of himself.

Such a delightful story. Mitchell was such a great character even in the beginning when he was a bit of a grump. His daughter Poppy was simply darling and I loved every bit of the book that she was in. The friendship that formed between Mitchell and Liza was wonderful. These were definitely two people that complemented one another. There was also a little side story that was kind of fun. There was a contest where people sent in letters about the hero jumping off the bridge, those were enjoyable to read along with Mitchell. The perfect feel good story for these unsettling times.

This book in emojis 🌉 🔒 🎼 ✉️

*** Big thank you to Harlequin for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***

I picked up this book because the premise reminded me of our trip to Dublin last year, particularly the Ha’penny Bridge, officially known as the Liffey Bridge. And it shouldn’t have, because the Ha’penny Bridge is not a love lock bridge, at least not officially. Although I’m sure it happens.

On the other hand, the fanciful, ultra-modern, slightly fantastical bridge that lies at the heart of so much of the heartbreak in Mitchell’s past sounds exactly like the Samuel Beckett Bridge, which we walked across every day while we were in Dublin.

Mitchell’s story is a story about bridges. Not so much about designing them, as he did when he was a practicing architect, or about denuding them of illicitly placed locks, as he is doing when the story opens.

(Not that the denuding doesn’t need to be done. As romantic as the love lock concept sounds, it’s actually dangerous to the bridges. Padlocks are heavy. Lots and lots and lots of locks all together are VERY heavy. If the bridge wasn’t designed to bear the extra weight – eventually it won’t – with disastrous results.)

But the bridges in this story are the kind of bridges that span the distance between yesterday and tomorrow. Between the past and the present, Between a father and his daughter, both grieving the loss of their partner/mother in their own – unfortunately completely antithetical – ways.

And most especially, the bridge between clinging to the hurts of the past and searching for a brighter future.

Escape Rating B: This is a story that rewards patience. There’s a point in this story, just about at the halfway point, where a switch flips and it shifts from being a bit of a downer to a story where it’s not just that things are finally happening, and Mitchell is shaken out of his rut, but where things actually look up and get brighter.

Which does happen because Mitchell gets shaken out of his rut when he leaps over that bridge in pursuit of the mysterious woman who fell off – a mystery that seems to deepen as Mitchell learns more about her. In the process he learns more about himself, or finds the road back from the slough of despond he’s been wallowing in for the past three years, or both.

Or one could say that his act of spontaneous heroism breaks him out of the straitjacket of plans, goals and objectives that he has been trapped in since his partner’s death. A straitjacket that he has been using to keep himself from feeling the grief he needs to get through.

Once his daughter’s music teacher, Liza Bradfield, reveals that the woman he rescued is her sister, a sister who has been missing for the past year, his carefully planned and somewhat stale life moves, awkwardly at first, into Liza’s more colorful and much more spontaneous world.

At first the endless circling of his thoughts tries to drag him back into his safe but sterile existence, only for him to be taken by the hand by his daughter Poppy and pulled into the world that she wants to inhabit. A world with friends and fun and definitely with Liza.

But it takes Mitchell about half the book to start climbing out of that rut, and it’s a bit dark and gloomy down there. The story only begins to shine when Mitchell starts letting things happen instead of trying to plan them to death – and he’s all the better for it. So is Poppy. So is the story.

The second half of this book really sings, as Mitchell starts to shake himself loose, finally lets himself grieve and move forward (the catharsis is much needed) and gets himself involved not just with Liza but with her entire slightly crazy family.

His heart opens, his world expands and sunshine comes back into his life. A big part of that expansion consists of the wave of letter writing inspired by his plunge into the icy river. Those letters let him see just how many people he’s touched – and they touch him in return.

I enjoyed Mitchell’s story, but I really wish we could have seen more of those letters, because the ones we got were a delight – even when Mitchell wasn’t ready to see it.

What a sweet story! A 30-something widower is raising his daughter on his own in a small apartment in the city, so he can be close to the menial job he's taken so he has more time to devote to her. Instead of being the architect he was trained to be, he now cuts the padlocks that are tributes off the bridges he used to create. The locks may be sentimental to those who hang them there, but they're unsightly and heavy to the fences and structures they cling to.

His whole perspective starts changing after a woman falls into the river beneath one of the bridges as he's rushing to pick up his daughter. Being the only one to see her fall over the edge, he feels he has no choice but to jump in and rescue her. This one action leads to a new view of the padlocks, then new relationships and changes to how he interacts with those people he's known his whole life.

While the story eventually worked to its happily-ever-after, there seemed to be several different ways it could get there, so finding out the real ending was a joy. Unfortunately, several of the characters just felt like place-holders to me. The story was the real draw of this book. Overall, I'd give this one 3.5 out of 5 stars. It was a great pick-me-up story and a distraction without requiring a lot of my attention to untangle the story, characters, or relationships.

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is a charming book about love, grief, and the healing power of hope.

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge opens to find Mitchell cutting locks off of a bridge. Due to an extremely popular song, people have begun declaring their love by placing padlocks across a bridge. These locks are causing all kins of issues to the bridge and are an eyesore for the city workers. Mitchell has to cut all of the love locks off, which suits him just fine, because he has no room in his life for romance.

After becoming a widower three years ago, Mitchell is finding life not so much about living as surviving. He fills his and his daughter's days with tasks and schedules to keep from ever having the time to face the loss of his wife, or his own guilt surrounding her death. That is until he saves a woman in a yellow dress on the bridge. Though he's able to prevent her from being swept away in the water, he can't prevent himself from being swept up into her life.

The story here takes a turn from the expected, as The Secrets of Love Story Bridge does not center around the woman in the yellow dress, but rather her sister Liza. In trying to find the woman in the yellow dress, and help Liza, Mitchell finds a new purpose in life and the road to self forgiveness.

It's a very cute, quick read story, full of beautiful imagery and really emotional letters. It was nice to read about book about letter writing set today, when so very few letters are sent. It's quickly becoming a lost art, but I still love the idea of people being able to write to each other, because it leaves behind tangible evidence of a loved ones thoughts and feelings long after they are gone. There is something almost magical about touching the paper they touched, tracing your fingers along their looping script, and feeling like you can make a physical connection through time.

A letter can bring the dead among the living for the briefest moment, offering a particular type of comfort that is otherwise unavailable.

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge sometimes seems to meander a little bit, and I felt like it could have used a little more depth or action to the story to keep it moving, but it was an emotional and pretty story of a man's recovery.

Thanks, Netgalley, for the copy to review.

Life is a little bit stressful right now for many of us. This book is like curling up with a warm, fuzzy blanket, a cup of tea, and a best friend. It’s a quiet book that really focuses on the emotional journey of Mitchell Fisher, a grieving single father who is trying his best to raise his nine year-old daughter. His grief over his partner’s death affects him in ways he doesn’t fully understand until a chance encounter turns his life upside down. After discovering that his daughter’s music teacher is a sister to the woman he saved from the river sets Mitchell on a path of finding purpose and focusing on someone else’s needs, no matter how disruptive it is to his very structured daily routine. Phaedra Patrick is so skillful in creating situations and conversations that feel very real and I love how she was able to put Mitchell in situations where he has to really think about his reactions and how those reactions are holding him back from moving on with his life. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.
Thank you to Park Row Books for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.