Caroline Wallace

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

This was a truly cute book! I loved Martha right from the beginning. She is a highly endearing character, filled with wonder, innocence and kindness for everyone. In her sixteen years of life, Martha has only ever seen the inside of Lime Street Station in Liverpool. The woman who found her and raised her in the lost property office, Mother, has her convinced that the whole station will collapse if she ever dares to set foot outside. Even though her life, spent mostly inside the lost property office with Mother's religious fanaticism and constant abuse, could very well be a miserable one indeed, Martha manages to turn every day around and live happily with her books, her friends and her magical gift for finding lost things.

The station was a fantastic setting, filled with quirky characters and action. I loved Elisabeth, the cafe owner, as a character. She is incredibly full of life, and she clearly shows how much she cares about Martha and their other friends, George Harris the Roman soldier and the eccentric William, who lives in the tunnels underneath the station.

"I wonder if being lost is more about waiting to be found"

Together, this unlikely group of friends try to solve the mystery of the missing ashes of a Beatles roadie. Although not the best part in the book, this was actually quite interesting in itself, and I did learn many things about the Beatles and Liverpool city that I didn't know before. I also liked seeing Martha grow through meeting Max, an Australian writer with an incredibly low morality threshold. There is nothing he won't say or do to reach his objectives, playing with Martha's innocence and trust, and that definitely made him one of the most despicable characters ever!

This was definitely a very enjoyable read, filled with cute and funny characters. Martha in particular stands out, with her indestructible joie de vivre, constantly looking for the good in everyone and the joy in the little things. This book deals with some sensitive topics (like domestic abuse) in an incredibly delicate manner and builds a gorgeous modern fairytale about finding yourself.… (plus d'informations)

I have to admit that the cover is one of the reasons that I was drawn to the book and of course the description of the book about a young girl that grows up in a train station after being abandoned in a suitcase. 16-year-old Martha has been raised by an over religious "mother", and she is told she can't leave the train station because it would collapse if she did that. But, when her mother dies everything changes and she needs to find her birth mother to be able to run the lost property place in the train station. Then, there is the lost suitcase that is said to belong to Mel Evans, roadie to the Beatles...

The Finding of Martha Lost is an interesting and special book about a young girl coming of age. Martha has grown up in a train station, this is her world and she has never put her foot outside. However, everything is changing for her. I loved the whole train station world with its odd characters, from the old man with the bowler hat living below in the sewers to the young man in a roman costume. And Martha is a special girl, she can see everything she touches history from keys to hockey sticks.

The Beatles part of the story was something that I did not completely fall for. I was way more interested in the train world than what happened with the suitcase, and it didn't help that Max Cole, the man that found the suitcase, is an unpleasant person that Martha seems to fall for. He's POV in this book didn't feel interesting. I didn't mind the story about Mel Evens, but I could not really find myself that interested in the storyline with Max and the second half of the story when Max shows up at the train station just felt a little bit less interesting because if that. Still, it a charming book, I just wish I had been a bit more taken with the story and perhaps that it would have been a bit more magical realism in the story than Martha ability to touch and know things about objects past.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy for an honest review!… (plus d'informations)

Where to start to describe this wonderful, magical and clever book. Well I could just say it's wonderful, magical and clever I suppose!

First of all we have the setting. Lime Street Station in Liverpool and the Lost Property Office in particular is the perfect backdrop for Martha Lost's story. We have the magic of the tunnels underneath the station, the quirkiness of the things that end up in the Lost Property Office and the interesting people who pass through.

We also have a cast of captivating characters. Martha herself is only 16 but has a wise, yet also naive, head on her shoulders. Her friend Elisabeth runs the coffee bar next door and then there's William and George Harris who Martha meets at the station and who add such colour to the story.

We have a sub-story about Mal Evans, roadie for The Beatles whose ashes have gone missing. Parts of this story are factual. The whole story is set in the steaming hot summer of 1976.

Put all these aspects together and you have a wonderfully original story which I loved to read.

There's a kind of innocence to this book which really is charming. Everybody and everything was so perfectly described that I wanted to be in the book with all the characters. I wanted to have lemon drizzle cake with Martha and Elisabeth, I wanted to see George Harris in his Roman soldier outfit (his uniform for his job as a tour guide), I wanted to see what Martha saw when she first met William. It is all so wonderfully evocative and unique.

The Finding of Martha Lost is just delightful and I was utterly entranced by it.… (plus d'informations)