Member Review

What’s not to love about a story focused on a bookshop and this one focuses on a lost one in Dublin, a double treat!
It is told from a historical and present day timeline and told from 3 different POV, which can be a tad confusing at times if you’re not paying attention, but it really isn’t terribly hard to keep up with once you get into the story.
We have Opaline Carlisle, who’s set just after the First World War and her older brother is forcing her into an arranger marriage because her family’s finances are in a shambles after the war. She doesn’t want to marry, so she flees to Paris and starts working at Shakespeare & Company where she meets the likes of Hemingway and such and starts to be able to support herself by trading as a book dealer.
Then we have the current timeline, which gives us the two other POV, that of Martha, who has fled her abusive husband and is hiding out by working as a housekeeper for a retired actress; and Henry, a PHD student who she meets there while he is researching Opaline Carlisle, because Henry is convinced that Opaline’s bookshop was next door to where Martha is now working, but he can’t prove it and there’s nothing to back it up other than his theory.
The two timelines intertwine seamlessly and give us a story of love, magic, and the search for a lost manuscript that will literally change the literary world.
The characters are well written, the narration is well done and I truly enjoyed listening to this story. There are some triggers to be aware of such as addiction & domestic abuse.
Thank you to One More Chapter for this audiobook arc in exchange for my review.