The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney

The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney
UK Publication: June 2022
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★]

This ARC was provided by Random House UK (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

A Freaky-Deaky good read.

Synopsis from Goodreads: I had dreams once, but never for anything as extravagant as happiness. Still, Auntie Bell and me have fresh cream cakes every Saturday. They’re sweet enough to take the edge off. I hope they’re enough to get me through being outed as a fraud. Turns out, I’m more my missing mother’s daughter than anyone first suspected.

There was a time when Lindy Morris escaped to London and walked along the Thames in the moonlight. When life was full and exciting.

Decades later, Lindy lives back with her Auntie Bell on the edge: on the edge of Donegal and on the edge of Granda Morris’s land. Granda Morris is a complicated man, a farmer who wanted sons but got two daughters: Auntie Bell and Lindy’s mother, who disappeared long ago.

Now, Lindy and Bell live the smallest of lives, in a cottage filled with unfulfilled dreams. But when the secrets they have kept for thirty years emerge, everything is rewritten. Will Lindy grasp who she is again?

My Thoughts: I love Lindy Morris and that is a good thing as we spend the entire novel listening to her thoughts on everything. Lindy has some mental health issues and has been institutionalised for short periods throughout her life and as the reader gets deeper into the novel it is easy to see how and why she ended up where she is.

Lindy is sparky, funny and irreverent she accepts what life has given her and makes the best of it, even if making the best of it is not what anyone else would want for themselves. In fact it is bleak and depressing.

This is a story of Irish family life, of a farm that needs a male heir and a patriarch who controls all the woman in his life with an iron fist. It is a story of religion, of the different attitudes towards men and women and a story of discovering that getting what you want doesn’t always work out.

It is also a story with a brilliant ending I can’t say more than that so you will have to read it.

Who would like this? I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys family sagas, who likes their characters quirky and who can appreciate an insight into a different time and place.

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