The Secrets of Love Story Bridge

February 15, 2020
Three years after a single dad suffers the loss of his partner, he finds love again. Mitchell Fisher, former architect and current city maintenance worker, is doing his best as a single dad. He and his 9-year-old daughter, Poppy, live in his onetime work-week crash pad in the city of Upchester, England, now the only home they have. It's been three years since Poppy's mom, Anita, died in a car crash, and Mitchell is still struggling with his grief over her death and with the long hours he spent working apart from his little family in an effort to take care of them. Author Patrick (The Library of Lost and Found, 2019, etc.), known for her cozy tales, has crafted another one. The story here kicks off when Mitchell catches the eye of an attractive woman on a bridge just before she locks a padlock onto the railing, a token of love and commitment that's become a citywide trend. (Mitchell has to remove these padlocks as part of his job.) Then the woman falls into the river below. Despite not being a great swimmer, he jumps in and saves her, but he doesn't manage to learn the woman's name. When Mitchell becomes a local hero in the press, though, he finds out that the woman, whose name is Yvette, has been missing for 12 months, and he joins together with Liza, her sister (conveniently his daughter's new music teacher), to locate her. Readers will need to suspend their disbelief at the tale; the right person always shows up at the right moment, solutions appear just as they are needed, health scares aren't really that bad, and bad guys back down immediately. Told in uncomplicated prose, this is a straightforward story that takes as fact that love is truly in the air. Fans of cozy fiction will enjoy this small escape from reality.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2020
The small English city that Patrick (The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, 2017; The Library of Lost and Found, 2019) brings to life in her new novel is known for its love story bridges, on which couples fasten padlocks to demonstrate their feelings. But Mitchell's job is to remove the locks to preserve the bridges. Once a promising architect, he has cut back professionally to care for his daughter, Poppy, after her mother's death. When a young woman accidentally slips while hanging a lock, Mitchell jumps in the river to save her life, thereby forever changing his own. Mitchell's heroism inspires people from all over to write to him with stories of love and loss, while the woman, who promptly vanishes, turns out to be the sister of Poppy's music teacher, Liza, and she had been missing for a year. Through a new friendship with Liza, Mitchell discovers how closed off he's been to reconciling his grief and guilt and to finding joy again. Patrick blends romance, mystery, and quirkiness to highly entertaining effect.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2020

Three years after partner Anita's death, architect Mitchell Fisher copes with his grief by writing her daily love letters--or mostly updates about their plucky nine-year-old daughter Poppy. He's still too guilt-ridden to open the note she left him on the morning of the accident that so unexpectedly took her life. For work, he removes the padlocks lining the city of Upchester's oldest bridge, a job he should loathe but secretly relishes. One fateful summer afternoon, with steel cutters in hand, he sees a woman with an uncanny resemblance to Anita who fastens her own declaration of love to the bridge, then loses her balance, plunging into the river below. Jumping in after her, Mitchell saves her life, but once safely ashore is knocked unconscious by a cyclist, having never learned the alluring stranger's name. His quest to find her takes the story in a surprising turn when Poppy's offbeat music teacher Liza claims the woman is her estranged sister Yvette, who's been missing for months. VERDICT Tender but twisty, this fourth novel from British author Patrick (The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper) bears the writer's signature for layered tales of finding family and belonging, as she skillfully reveals the hidden connections that bind the lives of these endearing characters together. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/19.]--Annalisa Pesek, Library Journal

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2019

Widowed single father Mitchell Fisher, whose job involves removing padlocks from the city of Upchester's famed "love lock" bridges, is proclaimed a hero when a video of his rescuing a woman from the river goes viral. But the woman, said to have been missing for a year, has vanished again, and Mitchell joins the hunt for her. With a 50,000-copy first printing; beloved Patrick characters Benedict Stone and Arthur Pepper will soon appear on the big screen.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.