A lovely heartwarming read. With a lovely cast of characters about friendships and hope
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I’m absolutely in love with #EddieWinstonIsLookingForLove! A beautiful, poignant, quirky, hilarious, life affirming, uplifting, charming and heartwarming novel of friendship, loss, longing and seizing the day. Bella and Birdie are perfectly rounded characters, but it’s Eddie himself that steals the show with his unique fashion sense, collection of treasures he procures from the charity shop, the delight he finds in sandwiches, his affinity with birds and Pushkin, his wisdom, empathy and sense of adventure. Reminiscent of Museum of Ordinary People, The Keeper of Lost Things, Preloved and Sincerely Me, this is absolutely a contender for my Book of the Year.

EXCERPT: Bella says, 'I couldn't stop thinking about it last night when I went back to work. One of the biggest moments of your life is still ahead of you.'
'It is?'
'Your first kiss is something you never forget.' She pauses. 'Some girl in the year below me had her first kiss at a party where she got so drunk she was taken to A&E to have her stomach pumped.'
'Crikey.'
'She was fine.' Bella waves a hand. 'We've all been there.'
'I haven't.'
'That's exactly my point,' she says, and then, appearing to want to hedge how enthusiastic she is to want to help me, she adds, 'You know, if you want.'
As I recall what Bhav said when she dropped off the bags of jewelry for me to search through. 'So exciting to be searching for something. It gives us purpose, don't you think?'
'Maybe . . .' I begin to say.
A pigeon flaps down from the tree above us and lands at my feet. We look at it for a moment. It looks back at us with its dark eyes.
'I often think,' I tell her, that if something were going to happen, it would have happened by now. Perhaps my first kiss was just not meant to be.'
Bella and the bird exchange a glance. And she shakes her head.
'It's not too late, Eddie Winston.'

ABOUT 'EDDIE WINSTON IS LOOKING FOR LOVE': Those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.

Eddie Winston is ninety years old. He has lived and he has loved, but he has never been kissed.

A true gentleman and incurable romantic, Eddie spends his days volunteering at a charity shop, where he sorts through the donations of the living and the dead, preserving letters and tokens of love along the way. It is here that he meets Bella, a troubled young woman who, aged twenty-four, has just lost the love of her life.

When Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help him finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie to the moment he has waited for all his life.

MY THOUGHTS: Eddie Winston is Looking for Love was one of my top ten reads of 2024. I somehow neglected to review it, but I'll remedy that right now.

This is a beautiful story. Eddie Winston is a very special person. He sees treasure where you and I might only see dross. No, he's not a hoarder, but he has a special place in his home for things that might otherwise have been discarded; things that may have meant a lot to someone once; a shelf where he keeps things he intends to return to the person when they need or want them again or things that need to be passed on to the person for whom they were intended. Eddie has a massive heart.

Eddie is just downright charming, but really, real life has passed him by. Bella is heartbroken. The life she had planned has been cruelly snatched away from her. Eddie recognises a need in her when she brings in a donation which he places on his shelf and, she in turn, recognises a need in him when she realises she has made a dreadful mistake, and returns to try and get her donation back.

Eddie Winston is Looking for Love is a wonderful story of friendship, grief, healing and love. The characters are endearing, the storyline both charming and heart wrenching. As I read about Winston's lonely life, my heart ached for this lovely kind man. He's a man who loves a good romance, yet this one thing has been denied him.

Does he get it in the end? - read Eddie Winston is Looking for Love for yourself. You won't regret it.
Quite the most beautiful book I have read since One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#EddieWinstonIsLookingforLove #NetGalley

MEET THE AUTHOR: Marianne Cronin was born in 1990 and grew up in Warwickshire. After gaining her PhD in applied linguistics, she worked in academia until becoming a writer. She lives in the Midlands with her family and her cat.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Doubleday via NetGalley for providing an e-ARC of Eddie Winston is Looking for Love by Marianne Cronin for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

I sat down and read this in one sitting. A beautiful, gorgeous love filled novel about friendship, grief, second chances and never giving up hope. Eddie Winston is a character we should all aspire to be more like, and spending time with him in the pages is an absolute delight. There is sadness in this book, it deals with loss and loneliness but peppered throughout is humour and wisdom that will leave you all the richer for reading it. I’ve now read both books by this author and sincerely cannot wait for her next one. Highly recommended!

I really loved 'One hundred years of Lenni and Margot' so I was quite excited to read this from the same author,

"Eddie Winston is 90 years old. He has lived and loved, but he has never been kissed.
When Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help Eddie Winston finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie Winston to the moment he has waited for all his life."
What a delightful book, showcasing that friendships can be forged anywhere and between anyone. Eddie and Bella are perhaps an unlikely pair, but it really works for them.
I'd thoroughly recommend a read of this and any other books my Marianne.

This was a lovely gentle read that I really enjoyed. Eddie is 90 years old and working in his local charity shop. He likes to keep items that come in, not valuable items, but items that remind him of something or have a story behind them. Eddie has loved and lost before, so when he meets Bella at the shop it is her sadness and heartbreak that draw him to her. Bella is grieving the loss of her partner and the two strike up a friendship. He tries to make Bella feel better while she is determined to help Eddie find love. I loved delving into his past, because I’ve worked with elderly people and I know there is so much life experience there as well as a wealth of emotional experience that can teach younger people a thing or two. I also love age gap friendships because the younger person benefits from their friend’s experience while also bringing the elderly person up to date. Bella and Eddie’s friendship is truly heartwarming and there’s a lot of humour too. I didn’t want to put the book down.

I received an ARC of this book via netgalley and am grateful for the chance to read it. I loved the idea of a man working in a charity shop who "saves" items of mostly romantic value. It is an idea I haven't seen before and I do like the unusual narrative line. Having said that I am a little on the fence about how much I loved the book overall. I found it a little slow in the latter part of the first half but then it truly took off after the midpoint. I am not sure whether some of this was my getting stuck between the differing time periods. I loved the characterisation, the real individuality of the personnae, Eddie in particular.

Overall i think the gently humor, the romance and the uniqueness of both narrative and character won me over

Eddie Winston is ninety years old. He helps out at a local charity shop. He searches through items & sometimes takes them home to try & reunite them with their former owners who might not have meant to part from them. In a box he finds a battered, graffitied pair of trainers & some letters. He manages to track down Bella whose boyfriend had died. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship. Eddie admits that he has never been kissed & of the one who got away. He remembers the locket she wore & admits he's always on the look out for it.

The story tells of the past when Eddie was a young man & Bridie, the object of his love, who also never forgot him. It is a tale that makes you laugh & cry & just feel warm all over! When I started this book I hadn't realised it was the same author of A Hundred years of Lenny & Margot which I also loved. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this wonderful book.

As I started this book, I realised that it reminded me of one of my favourite books of the decade, One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot. Then I realised that it is by the same author! No wonder. It has the same moving mix of gentle comedy and compassionate characterisation leading to some fantastic relationships. I won’t rehash the plot here but enough to say that if you need some encouragement, particularly in view of how humanity can be compassionate to one another, then pick this book up and give it a go.

This is my book of the year. I have laughed and I have cried, and when it was over I wanted to start it all over again.

I fell in love with Eddie Winston and his eccentric fashion choices from the very beginning. I loved how the author shared his past and his present with us in a way that felt genuine and exciting.

I could not put it down and I loved the ending so completely. Can't wait to read what the author writes next.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for the ARC.

5★
“I’m lining up dead men’s shoes on a rack. How strange that for all their lives, the men who wore these shoes walked a path that would lead to me. At any point, through their childhood or in their teenage years, we were destined to be linked. ”

Eddie seems unlikely to be such a captivating protagonist of a love story. He’s an old man in his nineties, working in a charity shop, sorting through family donations of the treasures and detritus of the dead. Some boxes are dumped unceremoniously as the younger people hurry to get on with Life. But he cares. Eddie cares about everyone, the people who once were and the families they’ve left behind.

“And there is no telling if the shoe brush (£3) or the pink enamel mirror (£7.50) are pieces of historical importance, of meaning and metaphor, or if they are just bits of old junk. Things picked on whims that eventually become the bones of a house. Maybe it is in fact the game of Mouse Trap (50p, missing its boot piece) that is the thing that this poor deceased person treasured so dearly.”

Mirrors may have other significance, of course.

“A sturdy boat of a woman sails into the shop. She browses the women’s jackets for a moment and then docks at the till.
. . .
‘I’m not filling in a form!’ she scoffs. ‘It’s just a mirror – take it or leave it.’ And then she weighs anchor and steams towards the door. And I am left looking into her mirror.
. . .
And what is it lately, that this highly polished glass showed, or did not show, to the woman that she felt the need to banish it from her home for ever? Did it whisper to her, ‘You are not what you once were?’ ”

Her mirror won’t make it to the Eddie Shelf at home, where he keeps things he thinks someone might regret having given away.

“Sometimes, they come back.

‘Did you sell that Pink Panther jumper yet? My mother knitted it by hand.’

‘Has the gold clock gone? I hated the thing, but it reminded me of Grandad.’

‘I donated an emerald ring. Is it still here?’”

He is so taken with a packet of love letters found in a box with a man’s things, that he’s determined to find the sender so he can return them to her. Another find is a series of love letters that were never posted, and he wants to track down the intended recipient. He loves a good love story.

Not all donors drop and run. A young woman with pink hair comes in one day, carrying a big box. Eddie helps her and asks the name of the donor for their records.

“‘Um, it’s, but it’s for . . . on behalf of. You can just put “Jake”. ’ Her voice cracks when she says his name.”

We know immediately what Eddie will do with Jake’s things. (He knows a love story when he sees one.) We also know that he and Bella are bound to adopt each other, which they do, meeting accidentally having lunch in the park one day.

Bella learns he would still like to find love, so she decides to spruce him up and get him out of beige cardigans and into online dating. He is taken with the idea.

“ ‘Take a good long look in the mirror, Eddie’, the shirt says. ‘You don’t belong in camel-coloured comfort. You belong in splendour.’”

Of course he does! As well as Eddie and Bella in the present, we meet nineteen-year-old Bridie Brennan in 1954 on her wedding day, where she has stopped outside the church, considering making a run for it. But the priest comes out to convince her she’s ready to get married.

She thinks to herself, that’s easy for him to say – he’s married to Jesus, who “doesn’t need his food cooked or his clothes cleaned, would never dream of making snide comments about how your hips look in your Sunday dress… Doesn’t embarrass you down the pub by calling you piglet when you’ve asked him not to.”

But in she goes - how could she?! We meet her again from time to time, as she regrets her choices.

Both Eddie and Bella, however, have some kind of infectious, irrepressible enthusiasm that doesn’t allow them to be flattened by regret. They get caught up in everyone else’s lives and love stories with the letters and donations.

Cronin’s stories seem so full of life, and I like her attitude. Her previous book, "The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot", has a new companion on my favourites shelf.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Transworld/Random House UK for a copy of #EddieWinstonIsLookingForLove for review.

I am a big fan on Marianne Cronin after falling in love with The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot. I'm here to tell you that Eddie Winston Is Looking For Love continues the winning streak. Eddie Winston is 90 and has never been kissed - what a premise to start with! I loved all the characters, Eddie, Bella and her pink hair, Birdie who is Eddie's lost love and Margie Eddie's colleague at the charity shop. The author brings her characters to life and I defy you not to root for them all the way through this wonderful book.

Eddie Winston is looking for love is a lovely book. Eddie is 90 years old and volunteering in a charity shop. Eddie likes to take home anything donated that he thinks people may regret giving up.

Eddie befriends a young women who is grieving her boyfriend. They bring each other friendship and many adventures.

I love the characters, the adventures and the friendships along the way.

A heart warming, tale of friendship, love and grief.

“Life is all about timing, in the end”
The story centres around a beautiful friendship between Eddie and Bella and the ones they have lost
Age is just a number and it’s never too late to find love
The style and pace of the novel was just beautiful - an utter joy to read
Fall in love with Eddie and Bella
Thanks @itsmariannecronin @penguinbooksuk & @netgalley for life-affirming, uplifting, feel-good read

Eddie Winston is 90 and has never been kissed; when he befriends grieving 24 year old Bella, she is determined to find a partner for him. Together they embark on a wonderful new friendship.

I loved this book, I thought it was funny, poignant and uplifting. A reminder that it's never too late to go after what you want in life.

Eddie Winston, a kind soul working at a charity shop in Birmingham, cherishes items he believes might be lost treasures or tokens of love, keeping them on his special "shelf." Tender, funny, and full of heart, this beautiful book is a heartwarming exploration of love, loss, and the relationships that shape us, making it one of my favorite reads of the year.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book

We meet Nonagenarian Eddie, he works in a charity shop and sometimes the items people donate “talk” to him and he can’t bear to let them go, so he takes them home, where he keeps them on a special shelf.
One day a young girl comes in and from there a budding it unlikely friendship develops.
Bella has recently lost her boyfriend, they had been together from a young age. She is struggling with grief and as her friendship with Eddie develops, she is able to let go of some of her hurt and begins to rebuild her life.
Eddie has loved and lost, but never been kissed. So Bella is determined to find him love.
Through the story, we learn about Eddies one and only love Birdie, they met when he was an intern at the University of Birmingham, where she lived and worked alongside her husband. Birdies husband was often unfaithful but Birdie being a strong catholic was bond by her vows and could never love Eddie the way she wanted.

Can Eddie find love at his age?


I fell in love with all the characters in this book and was hoping for things to work out for them all

Highly recommend

This book! Quirky and charming and funny - and intensely moving. A truly fabulous cast of characters and I loved the message that it's never too late to go for what you want. Absolutely wonderful

I absolutely adored The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, it is one of my all time fav reads so I was very excited to get an arc of Eddie Winston is Looking for Love!
This story was also absolutely adorable, another unlikely but utterly wonderful friendship of different generations who learn so much from each other, watching the bond blossoming and strengthening throughout was giving me all the cosy feelings, I also enjoyed Eddies back story that we visited in between the present day chapters.
All in all this was a lovely hug of a book!
One of my favourite lines was:
‘The eyes are the puppet of the heart; they can make a plain person beautiful so long as they are loved.’

Wow I loved this book.

Eddie is 90 works in a charity shop

This was humorous and fun and lovely
The relationships were great
I was taken in straight away
This book made me smile