Eddie Winston Is Looking For Love – Marianne Cronin

Published By: Doubleday
Pages: 352
Released On: 15/08/2024

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.

As Bella helps Eddie and Eddie helps, well, everyone, a soul-stirring story of friendship and kindness unfolds as we see how those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

Shut Up! How cute does this book sound?!

I’m not sure there’s a single person who read Marianne’s previous book – The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot – and didn’t absolutely love it. I know I definitely did. And I’ve been waiting for a new book since then, and I couldn’t be more thrilled about this.

This may only be the second of Marianne’s books, but she has this expertise at writing elderly characters as full characters, not just as a side note or comic character or to tick a box. They are right there, front and centre, and they’re marvellous.

Eddie Winston himself is an absolute darling and I fell in love with him instantly. We get to know present-day 90-year-old Eddie, as well as the Eddie of the 1960s, and I can completely believe that are the same person. He had this granddad energy around him, but also felt very much like a friend and confidante, and I would love to meet him. He’s the main character of the book (obviously), but he does have a few other characters that orbit around him, who are just as marvellous, but don’t take any sparkle away from him.

I love how Marianne has formatted this story. Instead of just having chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, and so on throughout Eddie’s story, we see it through people and items donated to the charity shop, so for example, a chapter might start “The Girl With the Pink Hair”, and that scene will focus on…you guessed it…a girl with pink hair, and how her part in the story affects Eddie. And I think that really helps bring everything else into Eddie’s story and, I just felt it was a uniquely lovely way of reading it.

It does have some tricky subjects such as ageing, loneliness, isolation, loss, grief, bereavement, loss love, marital issues, affairs, etc. They’re not so heavy to weigh the story down, but they do have enough gravitas to be important to the overall story, and they’re all topics that we can recognise and relate to.

It’s a very moving book. I don’t mean that necessarily in a really sad way as such, it’s more about the heart Marianne has managed to weave into it. This sense of love and friendship, both happiness and sadness, it really gets to you.

It’s a perfectly pitched novel. It’s not over-the-top sappy or sad or upbeat. It’s got it’s high moments and it’s low moments. It’s got pain and heartbreak and sorrow and longing and loneliness. But it’s also filled with love and friendship and second chances and memory and joy, and above all, hope.

It was as splendid as I hoped it would be. It’s so heartwarming and cosy, funny and loving, beautiful and uplifting. Just a really, really jolly read, and I loved it. Marianne Cronin is definitely an author that I will look out for, for many years to come. She is a very special storyteller and character creator.

I recommended Lenni and Margot to everyone who asked – and some who didn’t – and you can bet I’ll be doing the same with this. It is simply spectacular. I am in love with Eddie Winston and I am in love with Marianne Cronin and all that she creates.