The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe

☆☆☆☆☆
ebook, 390 pages
Expected publication: October 1st 2020 by Nimbus Publishing-Vagrant Press
About the Book:
Born into a basket of clean sheets—ruining a perfectly good load of laundry—Emmeline never quite fit in on her family's rural Nova Scotian farm. After suffering multiple losses in the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief, toxicity, and mental illness that Emmeline felt their weight smothering her. And so, she fled across the Atlantic and built her life in England. Now she is retired and living in a small coastal town with her best friend, Vera, an excellent conversationalist. Vera is also a small white dog, and so Emmeline is making an effort to talk to more humans. When she joins a memoir-writing course at the library, her classmates don't know what to make of her. Funny, loud, and with a riveting memoir, she charms the lot. As her past unfolds for her audience, friendships form, a bonus in a rather lonely life. She even shares with them her third-biggest secret: she has liberated hundreds of spoons over her lifetime—from the local library, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill. She is a compulsive spoon stealer. When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on, she knows she needs to leave her new friends and go see the farm and what remains of her family one last time. She arrives like a tornado in their lives, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around and getting quite a lot wrong. But with her generosity and hard-earned wisdom, she gets an awful lot right too. A pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline, in her final years, believes that a spoonful—perhaps several spoonfuls—of kindness can set to rights the family so broken by loss and secrecy.

Ordinary lives are just as glorious as great lives lived by great men and women.
We are all as important as each other.
Lesley Crewe is a Canadian author I love. being Canadian myself It is important to me to support author's from Canada and Ms. Crewe never disappoints. My favourite book of hers is Shoot Me and this title tops that.

This book is such a feel good story, which surprised me because there is also a lot of heartache throughout. One minute I'd have tears in my eyes and the next I'd be laughing and smiling. I can't write a review without mentioning Emmeline's dog, Vera. What a clever idea to have a dog act as a best friend and confidant. I loved Vera's dedication to her master and vice versa. They both had incredibly funny personalities.

This is a book of history, romance and family and the descriptive narrative was excellent. I felt I was there in Nova Scotia and England...we are taken on a wonderful journey from 1894 to 1969 and I had so much fun a long the way.

And although this could definitely be categorized as historical fiction, it is so much more than that. All. The. Stars.

Thank you NetGalley, Lesley Crewe and Nimbus Publishing-Vagrant Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

#NimbusPublishing #NetGalley