Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Renee at It’s Book Talk. Throwback Thursday was designed as an opportunity to share old favorites as well as older books in our TBR. As I started reviewing on Goodreads long before I started my blog, it seemed a great way of sharing my earlier reviews (which I hope have improved since the early days).

So this week I’m revisiting Lost & Found by Brooke Davis first reviewed in February 2015.

Millie Bird is seven-years-old. On a shopping trip with her mum, Millie is left alone beneath the Ginormous Women’s underwear rack in a department store. Her mum never returns.

Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and hasn’t left home since her husband died. Instead, she fills the silence by yelling at passers-by, watching loud static on TV, and maintaining a strict daily schedule. Until the day Agatha spies a little girl across the street.

Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven and in a nursing home. He remembers how he once typed love letters with his fingers on to his wife’s skin. Now widowed, he knows that somehow he must find a way for life to begin again. In a moment of clarity, he escapes.

Together, Millie, Agatha and Karl set out to find Millie’s mum. And along the way, they will discover that the young can be wise, that old age is not the same as death, and that breaking the rules once in a while might just be the key to a happy life.

My Review

I rarely give out 5 stars, as for me, such a book has to be excellent and stay with me long after I’ve read it, Lost & Found is one of those rare books. I loved everything about it, the story was clever, the characters brilliantly drawn and the writing just beautiful. As the blurb tells you all you need to know I am saying nothing more about the plot. The joy lies in discovering that for yourself.

Yes it’s quirky, and I guess that might not appeal to some, but if you suspend belief and just go with it, its also funny, heartwarming, sad and insightful. While it covers some fairly deep topics, namely the nature of death, ageing, loneliness and abandonment, it does so without being depressing.

The writing is so descriptive that it was like watching a film inside my head, it was so easy to imagine. Millie Bird is a delightful creation and despite being a red head, I’m afraid in my head she morphed into Milly Molly Mandy (yes that gives my age away). Agatha became Dame Maggie Smith in her curmudgeonly persona of Muriel Donnelly (Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and Karl was a scruffy Ian McKellen. I was drawn in and enchanted from the start and just wanted the best outcome for Millie, Karl and Agatha. I hope you feel the same way.