I wanted to love this book. The synopsis gave so many hints of joy and sadness and life but it fell flat overall.

A hugely unique, timeless love story with a superb letter plot at its heart. Will they meet? Should they meet? What will happen to William's existing live? So many questions and the answers will leave you wanting to know more. Read this book and enjoy life.

This was not at all what I expected. I thought it would be more about the letters William finds and investigates, but the focus was actually more on the stagnant relationship of him and his wife. I didn't really find that gripping at all and would have liked some more stories of the letters and finding their destinations. The ending left me confused, though weirdly I really want to discuss it with someone.

This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

Helen Cullen’s The Lost Letters of William Woolf is an enchanting novel about the resilience of the human heart and the complex ideas we hold about love—and a passionate ode to the art of letter writing

I started it, but unfortunately it did not hold my attention so I stopped reading. I couldn't get past the first 30 pages.

Charming and easy read, it is a lovely, feel-good quirky romance that will take you out of yourself. Love the idea of letter detectives and the characters really jump off the page.

I’m not sure whether I’ve been too harsh on The Lost Letters of William Woolf, but this is definitely a book with a great concept and poor execution.

William Woolf works in the Dead Letters Depot, a place where undeliverable post is sent in the hopes that one of the workers will be able to solve the mystery of that smudged address or that incorrect postcode. William spends most of his time up on the fourth floor in the ‘Supernatural Division’, tackling letters to Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy, and when he stumbles across a letter from a lady called Winter addressed to her Great Love, he begins to wonder whether it could have been meant for him.

Now, I thought that concept sounded really cute – a lonely single male finding love in a postbag – but when I started reading it I discovered William is married. Now, his relationship with Clare is in a bad place before he discovers Winter’s letters, but it certainly changed the direction that I thought this story was going to take. He’s emotionally cheating on Clare, fantasizing about finding this girl and being her true love, and I just can’t get on board with that. Yes, Clare does some horrible things, but I think William is a bit of a hypocrite for acting all high and mighty when he’s not that much better than her.

Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want spoilers for how the book ends, but I just couldn’t with the final couple of chapters.

William reads one of Winter’s letters and discovers she is getting married, so he goes to the church, AFTER writing a letter to Clare telling her that he really wants them to give things another go. What, so if you can’t crash the wedding of a woman you’ve been effectively stalking by reading private letters which you shouldn’t really have opened, you’ll settle for your wife?! Meanwhile Clare has been pretty adamant throughout the whole book that she doesn’t want a baby, and in a cheap, throwaway epilogue – One Year and One Day Later – we join Clare in her art studio. She’s sporting a huge baby bump, reading The Lost Letters of William Woolf (#inception) until a MYSTERY MAN walks in. I mean, if my husband and I split up and I was having a baby with somebody else I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be reading my ex’s book, so it’s not really that much of a question about who she ended up with…

I think I would have been able to give The Lost Letters of William Woolf two stars if my expectations hadn’t been so high. It doesn’t help that it starts off really strongly – William goes on little cross-country adventures to reunite people with precious items which have been lost in the post, and these chapters absolutely flew by – but things go downhill so quickly. I would have preferred reading William’s own book, which he writes about the most interesting lost letters he has encountered in his career: that definitely would have been a five star read!

Easy to read and thoroughly enjoyable this book offers a poignant alternative to real life and a chance to escape!
William Woolf is a very charismatic character who draws you in slowly till he has you hook line and sinker I really can't praise this book enough I wish I could give it more stars.

This book has a very interesting premise and had some intrigue and mystery at the beginning. However, it got slightly too sentimental for me towards the end.

A sweet and enjoyable read overall.

Although the story panned out in a way I wasn't expecting, this was a lovely feel good heart-warming story.

I loved this book. It is so descriptive you can picture the characters, where they are and what their surrounds are like. William is an aspiring author, married to Claire a barrister and working in the lost letters department of the Royal Mail. They spend their time trying to reunite people with lost pieces of post. William is a romantic soul and does his best to help people, even going so far as to deliver some of the pieces himself. When we meet him he is a bit lost and himself and Claire are not getting along too well so when he finds some letters addressed to a lover from someone called Winter he becomes absorbed into her story, even believing she is sending the letters to him.
This is a lovely story but also shows the reality of a long term relationship and its ups and downs.. I would recommend you read it. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and author for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review

The Lost Letters of William Woolf is many book genres wrapped up in one. Part mystery, part romance, and all fiction. The story opens introducing William Woolf at his place of employment in London, the Dead Letters Depot. A place where undeliverable mail is processed where employees open the mail to try and find an address in which to forward. To be honest, I hadn’t realized many countries actually have an office such as this, though they go by different names. In the United Kingdom, the office is now called the National Returns Centre located in Belfast or Portsmouth. While in the U.S., the office facilities are knows as Mail Recovery Centers.
So here we have William. He’s in his thirties. He’s complacent in life, and to be blunt, the spark has fizzled in his marriage. His wife, Clare, also worries about their lackluster life and longs for more.
One inauspicious day, William reads a letter addressed to ‘My Great Love’ and he begins a mission. To find out the author of these letters, because what if he’s actually this woman’s soulmate she so eloquently writes to?
As William searches for this mystery woman, Clare does some searching on her own. Yet both William and Clare veer from their relationship. Are their actions imperative in order to salvage their relationship? I’m not sure, but it makes a great book club question.
It’s a unique premise where the characters are real and imperfect. At times I became so infuriated with William and Clare, yet other times I could see the kindling that brought them together many years earlier. It’s not a smooth ride, but it’s one that feels authentic. And as I mentioned before, The Letters of William Woolf will provide fodder for in-depth discussion on life, fate, choices, success, relationships, love, and forgiveness.

I won't lie - it took me a few attempts to get into this one. The writing style was beautiful and had a lovely rhythm to it but it really did take a long time to get going for me. As someone who loves a good old fashioned letter though, I really wanted to stick with it and ultimately I'm glad I did. However, this wasn't a clear win for me.

At it's core, The Lost Letters of William Woolf is a very sweet book and I loved the first half. However, the second half I felt was lacking and sadly let it down. That being said, Cullen is no doubt a very talented writer and I look forward to future works of hers.

I struggled to get into the start of this book - perhaps a marriage falling apart isn't the happiest start to a book! But, it did pick up after perhaps 5% and I was hooked. William is such a charming character, and I loved the idea of the letters. This is a wonderful read about relationships and love, and a love letter to letter writing. It even made me pick up a pen and write my own letters.

I found this book surprising - I didn't expect so much of it to take place outside the mail depo, given the title and premise of the novel. It was poignant, and I was moved by it, but overall I think I liked the premise more than the execution, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

This book was too slow for me and I eventually gave up. I have been meaning to go back to it but it’s a case of ‘too many books; too little time’. The premise intrigued me but the execution didn’t. I DNF it at 40%

The idea of this book appealed to me so much that perhaps I let myself think it was going to be a different book than the one I read. I hoped to read people's lost letters, read the tales of them being reunited, and although this indeed did happen in the book - it was for so little time that I like the letters became lost.

I got lost in the mire of the book which seemed to drag on endlessly as it became more a story about the troubled marriage of William, whom I found to be a very lack lustre character. Together with his wife Clare they were a little dull to be honest.

The book is set I would say in the late 1980s but at times it felt more like the 1950s. When in the sorting office I could understand that - as it felt like time had stood still. But once out and about the dialogue reminded me of that from an old black and white movie most of the time, and I kept getting lost as to which era I was meant to be in.

I did finish the book - because I wanted to find along with William "Winter" the writer of the letters he discovers through his work. I was to say the least a little under whelmed by the ending of the book and for that reason and for feeling lost myself through most of the book I'm giving it 3 out of 5 stars.

My thanks to Netgalley for the ARC to review.

I am in charge of our Senior School library and am looking for a diverse array of new books to furnish their shelves with and inspire our young people to read a wider and more diverse range of books as they move through the senior school. It is hard sometimes to find books that will grab the attention of young people as their time is short and we are competing against technology and online entertainments.
This was a thought-provoking and well-written read that will appeal to young readers across the board. It had a really strong voice and a compelling narrative that I think would capture their attention and draw them in. It kept me engrossed and I think that it's so important that the books that we purchase for both our young people and our staff are appealing to as broad a range of readers as possible - as well as providing them with something a little 'different' that they might not have come across in school libraries before.
This was a really enjoyable read and I will definitely be purchasing a copy for school so that our young people can enjoy it for themselves. A satisfying and well-crafted read that I keep thinking about long after closing its final page - and that definitely makes it a must-buy for me!

The Lost Letters of William Woolf has been on my TBR list for a few months so when I was asked to be part of the blog tour I jumped at the chance to bump it up and finally get to read it. This debut novel by Helen Cullen is a delight to read, with a wonderful central character and a heartwarming and life affirming plot. William Woolf works at the Dead Letters Depot in London reuniting letters that have got lost to their desired recipient. When letters arrive addressed to ‘My Great Love’ from Winter, he believes fate has brought them to him and he could be Winter’s great love; the only problem being he is married. With his marriage on the rocks he begins to search for Winter in the places mentioned in her letters; could he have a new life, and could she be ‘the one’.

Set in the 1990’s this book has a touch of nostalgia about it; a time when people still wrote letters to each other rather than emails, and there was no internet to search for people. William is a detective for lost letters and parcels, reuniting them with their intended owners, including Whale vomit intended for a museum, and a medal from a fireman to the boy he saved during the war. Some of the letters were very emotional some funny but all were treated with the same respect and where possible sent to recipient. The idea of this depot of lost letters is like a world of hope, where the lost are found and opportunities come to life; it seems like the perfect place to work. This may seem a bit sentimental and nostalgic but Helen Cullen doesn’t over do the sweetness that could take over, but instead keeps the balance with the relationship between William and his wife Clare and the more mundane features of everyday life.

I loved William as a character, he is a romantic at heart and not one for confrontation. He seems old for his years, in his clothes and in his life; he is only in his thirties but dresses like someone much older and isn’t one for going out much. His marriage to Clare seems to be in a rut, where as William is more of a dreamer, Clare is a realist who put her dreams of being an artist to one side to become a lawyer. She is the main breadwinner and wants more out of life, a bigger house, a better lifestyle but William is happy as they are. At the centre of this is her disappointment in William for not writing the novel he was destined for after university, and in turn he is disappointed in her disappointment. The letters from Winter let him dream of this perfect woman, she could be his soulmate, the love of his life, a way out of his problems; a fantasy rather than the reality of his life. What comes through is how relationships change over time, those first years of passion give way to a different love that takes in all the practicalities of life and how our relationships adapt to that.

The Lost Letters of William Woolf is such a beautiful book to read, about love and marriage and the dreams we have. The prose is lyrical and flows easily taking you with it. William and Clare were characters I took to my heart, facing the difficulties life can throw and trying to work their way through it. This is stunning read, great locations, memorable characters and an amazing plot, a perfect read in my opinion; I wish I could read it again for the first time.