Meet Me At The Museum by Anne Youngson @DoubledayUK @annecater #blogtour #RandomThingsTours

Good morning and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Meet Me At The Museum by Anne Youngson. My thanks to Anne Cater for the invitation to join the tour and to the publisher for my review copy!

Author : Anne Youngson
Title : Meet Me At The Museum
Pages : 224
Publisher : Doubleday / Transworld Digital
Publication date : May 17, 2018

Sometimes it takes a stranger to really know who you are

When Tina Hopgood writes a letter of regret to a man she has never met, she doesn’t expect a reply.

When Anders Larsen, a lonely museum curator, answers it, nor does he.

They’re both searching for something, they just don’t know it yet.

Anders has lost his wife, along with his hopes and dreams for the future. Tina is trapped in a marriage she doesn’t remember choosing.

Slowly their correspondence blossoms as they bare their souls to each other with stories of joy, anguish and discovery. But then Tina’s letters suddenly cease, and Anders is thrown into despair.

Can their unexpected friendship survive?

The story of Meet Me At The Museum starts when Tina Hopgood emails a professor at a museum in Denmark. She and her best friend have always wanted to visit the museum to view an archeological discovery that has held their interest. But now Tina’s friend has died and Tina regrets never having made the journey.

She doesn’t expect a reply and as it turns out the professor she tried to contact has long since died himself. But her letter is picked up by Anders Larsen, the current curator.  What starts as talk about archeology, over time develops into a deep and fulfilling friendship.

Both Anders and Tina are incredibly lonely. Anders lost his wife of thirty years, although he’s not quite sure he ever truly had her in the first place. His two children live quite far from him and all he has is his work. Tina is a farmer’s wife. She has a husband, three children and a few grandchildren. And yet, she feels lonely too. This isn’t exactly the life she chose for herself. She was thrust into it and she wonders what her life would have been like if she’d been able to make another decision.

Meet Me At The Museum is entirely written in letters between Tina and Anders. The topics vary from archeology, to every day life and as their friendship deepens, they find themselves revealing things they haven’t even discussed with those closest to them. Ultimately, life will change for both of them. For instance, Tina’s letters encourage Anders to look around himself more, to appreciate nature and to let go of certain things. I quite liked Anders and sympathised with him. I found Tina, on the other hand, a little harder to connect to. While I could understand her situation, her indecisiveness got to me sometimes.

This is a beautifully written and moving story about an unlikely friendship, about how someone you’ve never met and may never meet knows you better than the people around you, about how it’s never too late to make a change. I found the concept of the correspondence a little hard to get into at first but once I got to grips with it and the characters’ personalities began to shine through, it ended up being rather enthralling and captivating. Tina and Anders will capture your heart and you will root for them all the way. A very accomplished debut by Anne Youngson.

Meet Me At The Museum will be published tomorrow!

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Bookdepository | Kobo | Wordery | Goodreads

ANNE YOUNGSON worked for many years in senior management in the car industry before embarking on a creative career as a writer. She has supported many charities in governance roles, including Chair of the Writers in Prison Network, which provided residencies in prisons for writers. She lives in Oxfordshire and is married with two children and three grandchildren to date. MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM is her debut novel, which is due to be published around the world.