If you’re looking for a gentle, hopeful book about second chances and starting over, then The Lost Letters of Evelyn Wright is the book for you! I loved it!
Blurb:
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 fall 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.
My Review:
They say that it’s often easier to give advice to others, regardless of the state of your own life, and that’s definitely the case where Beth is concerned.
She’s just come through a messy divorce, and has to considerably downsize and adapt to a lifestyle that’s very different to the one she had while she was married to her ex, Rob. Unfortunately, so do her children Olivia and Jacob. While dealing with her own feelings of anger, sadness and anxiety might be bad enough, she also needs to handle theirs. It’s not easy.
What makes it even worse is feeling that she’s very much on her own, having been abandoned by people whom she considered her friends. She realizes that once you leave your marriage behind, the friends you had while you were married, tend to stay behind too. This comes as an unexpected, disappointing shock.
And then, while she’s clearing out her new house, preparing for her children to arrive, she discovers a box of old letters that appear to be correspondence sent to an agony aunt by the name of Evelyn Wright. Although the dates indicate that they’re from decades ago, the responses show that she was kind, empathetic, and objective. Somehow the letters give Beth comfort. Advice doesn’t age or date, even though times have changed drastically since the days when these letters were sent, and slowly an idea begins to blossom as to how Beth can turn her life around.
I adored the characters in this book. Beth doesn’t always get everything right, and she knows that – but she owns her mistakes because she knows that’s the only way she’ll be able to move forward. She genuinely cares about the people who start writing to her for advice, quite rightly realizing that so many people out there, not just her, desperately need someone to confide in, someone to advise them, and sometimes, just a shoulder to cry on.
The author deals with many current issues sensitively and they’re woven into the story subtly and suitably: divorce, infidelity, loneliness and sexuality. I found it to be an absorbing, heartfelt read and can highly recommend it.
Many thanks to RaRa Resources and Boldwood Books for another fabulous blog tour.
Purchase Link: https://mybook.to/LettersEvelynSocial
Author Bio:
Clare Swatman is the author of three women’s fiction novels, published by Macmillan, which have been translated into over 20 languages. She has been a journalist for over twenty years, writing for Bella and Woman & Home amongst many other magazines. She lives in Hertfordshire. Before We Grow Old, was published in January 2022.
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Bookbub profile: Clare Swatman Books – BookBub
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