The Keeper of Lost Things: A Novel

The Keeper of Lost Things is about a woman named Laura who is a housekeeper for a short story writer named Anthony Peardew. After Anthony dies, he leaves his house to Laura, along with a room full of lost things.

Anthony’s condition for leaving Laura the house is that she find a home for all of the lost things. These things range from a missing puzzle piece to a biscuit tin full of cremains. Laura, the groundskeeper Freddy, and a young girl named Sunshine with a sixth sense for where things belong team up to return the items to their rightful owners. They create a website to catalog the lost things and encourage people to contact them in kind of a digital “lost and found.”

The Keeper of Lost Things is a leisurely slow burn of a book. I picked it up and put it down many times. The moments where Laura tries to solve the mysteries of the lost things are punctuated by short vignettes of how the lost things were lost to begin with. Another story arc was included in alternating chapters of how the biscuit tin of cremains came to be in Anthony Peardew’s possession. On top of that, a ghost (but not Anthony’s ghost) haunts the house while Laura tries to find homes for the things.

While I didn’t feel personally connected to the characters, the multiple layers of intrigue and storytelling make The Keeper of Lost Things a great book.