When Emma Mitchell inherits a dusty bookstore from a grandmother she barely knew, she expects nothing more than a quick trip to a small town to settle the estate. A practical financial consultant with a carefully ordered life in Chicago, Emma has little interest in digging through the remnants of someone else's passion project. But hidden within the walls of Rosalind's Books lies an extraordinary secret: a room filled with handwritten love stories collected over decades, each one tucked away between pages, waiting to be found.
Among these intimate confessions, Emma discovers a letter that stirs something dormant within her-written by a man named Julian who watched a mysterious woman visit the bookstore every Thursday, falling for her from a distance before disappearing from town without ever speaking to her. His words, raw with longing and poetic in their honesty, captivate Emma in ways she can't explain.
When she finds Julian's address scribbled in the margins of a book, Emma makes an impulsive decision that changes everything. Following this fragile thread of connection leads her not only to Julian himself, but to unexpected truths about her grandmother, her estranged mother, and the parts of herself she's kept carefully locked away.
As Emma slowly resurrects the bookstore and immerses herself in the stories left behind by strangers, she discovers that Rosalind was writing a book about this unique collection-a project left unfinished at her death. Determined to complete her grandmother's final work, Emma begins weaving these tales of love and loss with her own evolving story, creating something new from what was left behind.
The Bookstore of Lost Hearts is a tender, introspective novel about the courage it takes to claim an unexpected inheritance, the power of written words to connect distant hearts, and the beauty of finding yourself in the margins of someone else's story. For readers who loved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and The Little Paris Bookshop, this is a heartfelt meditation on how love stories-even the broken and unfinished ones-can guide us home to ourselves.
