Why a Booktrail?
2000s: What happens when you turn the pages of time?
Lost For Words
What you need to know before your trail
Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never show you.
Into her refuge – the York book emporium where she works – come a poet, a lover, a friend, and three mysterious deliveries, each of which stirs unsettling memories.
Everything is about to change for Loveday. Someone knows about her past and she can’t hide any longer. She must decide who around her she can trust. Can she find the courage to right a heartbreaking wrong? And will she ever find the words to tell her own story?
Travel Guide
Lost for Words (c) The BookTrail
York
The bookshop Lost for Words is located in York but sadly is only fictional. Well, you’ll be believing it’s all real and will seem very very real if you’re a bookworm. Loveday is the woman with a huge passion for books and words. She finds a book discarded or dropped on the pavement on the way into work and puts in lost and found in the shop with a notice on the window incase the owner sees it. She ends up going to a poetry evening as a result.
There are many great bookshops in York although try walking down the Shambles – as this is where I imagine Loveday cycling and cursing the cobbles!
There are many things in this book which if you are a real bookworm you’ll find yourself nodding at – did you know for example that it is perfectly acceptable reason to be late for work if you absolutely have to finish a chapter in a book. ! Then there are the smells of a book, the words which remind you of an event in your life, characters who share your pain and life experiences. Do you keep the things you find in second hand books, remember the many lists, inscriptions and notes people write in the books themselves? What is their story? Will you wonder next time you find something in a book?
The childhood home of Loveday is here and the chapters she goes back to this town are aptly entitled ‘History’ – this is a town also very much linked to a popular literary character – Dracula.
The ruins of the abbey on the hill is where she knows best with the smell of the sea not far away.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
I LOVE this book – heartwarming, all about books and the love of books but also tinged with sadness which will melt your heart and make you cry. It’s like an encyclopedia of emotions which made me laugh, cry, chuckle and gasp out loud. Loveday – well what a unique character she is. Grouchy and difficult but I really liked her – grumpy people always make me smile for some reason – and as her story unfolds, I really felt for her. I got a really clear sense of who is she, what she looked like and how others saw her. That’s the skill of a writer who knows people and can see inside them.
The serious issues aside, I loved loved loved the bookish references, the way the magic of bookshops is described and the smell of books, the turning down of pages being one of the biggest book sins there is. And the fact you can be late for work if you’re in the middle of a good bit. Well I have missed my stop several times!
It’s just a very unique book this one – underlying dark themes but written so delicately and so poetically – those book poems are just lovely. “A bookshop is not magic but it can heal your heart” Well there is some magic and some healing in this bookstore. I just wish the bookshop was real as I would be applying for a job, even working for free if I could. I’ve only spent a short time there but I know I have to go back.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Lost For Words
Author/Guide Stephanie Butland Destination: York, Whitby Departure Time: 2000s
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