Book Review: The Lost Bookshop

I’ve always believed that some books find you exactly when you need them, and The Lost Bookshop didn’t just find me—it practically tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “How far would you go to find your story?” Maybe the timing was right, and this was exactly what I needed when I picked it up. The Lost Bookshop allures one, and its story touches many.

Title	The Lost Bookshop
Author	Evie Woods
Genres	Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism
Year of Publication	2023
TLO rating	4/5

Plot - 4, Theme - 4, Characters - 4, Story - 4, Writing - 4 = 4

Overall = Recommend ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My Journey Through The Lost Bookshop

I went into this expecting a cosy kind of read about a magical bookstore. And while that magic is definitely there, what I actually found was something much more raw. It’s a story about three people—Opaline, Martha, and Henry—who have all been told they are “side characters” in their own lives. Watching them realise they are actually the protagonists was, for lack of a better word, life-affirming.

The book splits its time between 1920s London/Paris and modern-day Dublin. Usually, in dual timelines, I find myself rushing through one to get back to the other, but Evie Woods kept me pinned to both.

Opaline’s story broke my heart before stitching it back together. Seeing her fight for her autonomy in an era that sought to treat her like a piece of property was both infuriating and inspiring. Then there’s Martha, escaping her own shadows in Dublin, and Henry, the slightly bumbling but lovable scholar chasing a “lost” Brontë manuscript.

What really got me wasn’t just the mystery of the shop, but the magical realism. It’s subtle—like a tree growing inside a bedroom or tattoos that appear as sentences on skin. It didn’t feel like a “fantasy” novel; it felt like that shimmering feeling you get when you’re so deep in a book that the real world starts to feel a little bit blurry.

I’ll be real with you: some parts were hard to read. It tackles domestic abuse and the way society has historically silenced women. But the book doesn’t leave you in the dark. It uses the “Lost Bookshop” as a shelter—a reminder that even when we feel lost, we aren’t gone. We’re just waiting to be found.

Lost is not a hopeless place to be. It is a place of patience, of waiting. Lost does not mean gone forever. Lost is a bridge between worlds. ----- Evie Woods

This book is a love letter to bibliophiles. It’s for everyone who has ever walked into a bookstore and felt as if the shelves breathed.

Final Thoughts

Is it perfect? Maybe not. Some of the magical elements aren’t fully explained, and the romance moves a bit fast for my personal taste. But did I hug the book to my chest when I finished it? Yes, I absolutely did.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re living in the margins of someone else’s story, please pick this up. It might just help you find the door to your own shop.