Until the following items are met by the SMP team, I will be withholding any promotion or review of any St. Martin's Press titles (including SMP Romance and Wednesday Book titles):

1. Address and denounce the Islamophobia/racism from your employee.
2. Offer tangible steps for how you're going to mitigate the harm this employee caused.
3. Address how moving forward, you will support and protect your Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab readers, influencers, and authors in addition to your BIPOC readers, influencers, and authors.

What book for book lovers. With all the twist and turns you can really connect with the story. This brings up a lot of soul searching

The Lost Manuscript was an interesting read. I enjoyed the journey the main character took tracking down the author.

The premise of this books sounded far more interesting than the actual book turned out to be.

Narration: The narrator did an excellent job with the variety of POVs and nationalities.

Thanks to Dreamscape and NetGalley for my chance to review.

Really enjoyed this book. I loved this style and it was so fun getting to follow along with the thread that the lost manuscript created between all the characters.

I enjoyed listening to The Lost Manuscript by Cathy Bonidan. The different narrators with their enticing accents brought this story to life and provided a new layer to this epistolatory novel. I would definitely recommend this audio to anyone wanting to listen to a quick, interesting read about a found manuscript.

Thank you so much to net galley for sending me a copy of this audio book. Unfortunately I didn’t care for this book very much.

I ended up purchasing a physical copy of this one. I love an epistolary novel and tend to read them better on paper. France, letters, romance and a love for books I really enjoyed it.

This one was a unique read as it was written in the format of letters! I found that particularly appealing and gave this a little bit more connection to the characters and the story, for me. The narrator was great, and so was the story, the friendships and the relationships. I wasn’t totally in love with this one, but I did quite enjoy it.

Some novels are so moving, so memorable, that they have the power to transform readers, inspiring them to take a chance or make a change. And the audio edition of author Cathy Bonidan’s The Lost Manuscript tells the story of one such novel—and the lives it touched through the years...

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery

This book was delightful! A manuscript is found in an hotel room on the coast of Brittany, and a chain reaction of letter writing between the characters just takes off. A wonderful, beautiful, poetic, touching, and feel good epistolary novel. It made me want to write and receive letters. This is a book to be listened to. Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the advance copy.

I love a good ya and this one deff did it for me. Nothing too scandalous but still extremely cute. I deff recommend for teens and young adults

Books and stories are filled with the power and potential to educate, to provide an escape, to open new doors and opportunities, and to connect people—the possibilities are endless and without limits. According to Cathy Bonidan’s THE LOST MANUSCRIPT, they can even change lives. I recently had the joy of listening to this novel in audiobook format, enjoying four narrators possessing lovely accents, which only enhanced the reader’s experience and added to its European flair. Epistolary works can be unique in their styling and add to the personalization of the characters; however, they can also depending on how it’s done and the story, seem to drag out the novel and lead to some loss of descriptive scenery, sharp witty dialogue, interesting nonverbal communication and body language, etc. The format can be polarizing with some readers loving it and others hating it. In my opinion Cathy did a fabulous job with this stylistic genre and the audiobook only further contributed to its success. I truly enjoyed this French novel and it was definitely not ‘lost in translation’—it still had that European flair and flavor.

I could also envision this book quite easily being turned into a film with an amazing ensemble cast of beautiful and talented actors, each with their own lives and stories being woven together with their connections being revealed as the film went on. This film concept reminded me of films like Love Actually, Valentine’s Day, and New Year’s Eve. It also reminded me of the proven theory of six degrees of separation, which was later spun into the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. In THE LOST MANUSCRIPT, an incomplete novel is found by a publisher in the drawer of her hotel nightstand sparking her curiosity and need to not only find its author(s), but to trace the travel, places, and people whose hands the novel passed through to get from them to her. The beautiful thing is that it goes one step beyond that by actually touching and having a life changing or momentous effect on every person in its path who read the story. The characters range from different walks of life, various backgrounds, and multiple countries. From Brittany to Belgium to England and from robbers to lawyers to literary professionals, (and all those in between) these men and women are all impacted by and connected through this manuscript written years and years ago that gains new life with this search.

Just as the manuscript in the novel left an imprint on each of its readers, so too will this novel on its readers as well. It’s a book to cherish. It’s a reader’s book. For these reasons I’m selecting this novel for my next selection in my Bibliophile Showcase Series! The only unfortunate thing is I would’ve just loved loved to have a virtual author chat with Cathy Bonidan regarding this beautiful elegantly executed novel, but unfortunately she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak French. This is actually her first French novel that has been translated to English, but I sure hope it is not her last!! I would adore another opportunity to read an upcoming endearing novel penned by this brilliant author.

In an audiobook you need two things: an amazing narrator and a great plot. The Lost Manuscript has both. A story intriguing enough to keep you interested and engaged and a narrator with inflection and proper pitch. Very well done!

I don't like reading books in letter format; it is just not my taste in books. Even though it is not my style, I still did enjoy this book. I recommend it! Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for a copy of this book for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced copy of The Lost Manuscript. I listened to the audiobook.
A solid 4 stars for me! It was unique reading a book written in all letters. I know this style of writing will not be for everyone, but it worked for me. I enjoyed the friendships, love story, and mostly the letter writing. Have you written a letter in recent years? I'm not talking about an email or a lengthy text, but a true handwritten letter? I love letter writing and this was done exquisitely.

While I didn't love this novel, the audiobook was well done. The choice to have actors with French accents stand in for characters who spoke French in the original worked in conveying a sense of it being a novel in translation. The narrator for Anne Lise was my favorite, but they were all good. Having multiple narrators with very distinct voices was effective in helping me keep track of who was writing which letters.

A cozy story, where a woman finds a manuscript and sets out to find the author. This novel is a love letter to love, letters, and everything literary. Highly recommend for fans of Guernsey, though I think I would've preferred to read it over listening to it!

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for advance access to this title!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for my copy of The Lost Manuscript by Cathy Bonidan Narrated by Elodie Yung; Rupert Degas; Cecile Delepiere; Jean Brassard in exchange for an honest review. It published January 12, 2021.
I have to say, I had a hard time following this book on audiobook. I think there are just so many characters to keep track of, that I need to visually see the names to remember who is who. From what I understand though, this story is a really cool concept. A lost manuscript that traveled from hand-to-hand, changing and touching the lives it visited over the years.
If you have a hard time keeping track of characters, I would suggest listening to the audiobook while reading a physical copy.
The narration was very well-done, again, I think my misunderstanding of this book lies on my shoulders, and my difficulties keeping track.

SUMMARY:
Anne-Lise finds an abandoned manuscript in the bedside drawer of her hotel room with an address written in between the pages. Hopeful, Anne-Lise writes to the address and to her surprise, the author writes back! Apparently, this manuscript had been lost over 30 years ago and the second half of the book was actually written by someone else. Anne-Lise is invested in this mystery and takes it upon herself to track down everyone who had come across the manuscript. Spanning from different countries and people, we learn about the manuscript’s journey and the impact it’s left.

***
I really enjoyed the premise of this story and letter style formatting (epistolary format). As the story unravels, so does the amount of connections and number of people who were affected by the manuscript. It was fun hearing how the manuscript touched each person who came across it -- definitely felt like an enigma! (Plus it made me really curious to know what was actually written.)

With the audiobook, I loved listening to the different characters interact with each other via letter though it did get confusing at times. The book also spanned across various countries which was another fun way to see how despite how far or where everyone was at in their lives, their letters were still able to connect them to each other.

Overall, It’s a quick read/listen, well paced, epistolary novel. You get to see a little into each character’s life through their letters and how this random manuscripted has impacted each of them.