Summary

The prologue begins in 1954. An unknown person opens a package from their favorite nephew, Dickey. It contains a marbled blue book titled Regretting Belle.

Chapter 1 began in 1984 as Ashlyn Greer, the owner of An Unlikely Story (a rare bookstore in New Hampshire), sorted through a box of books in Kevin Petri’s vintage boutique. Ashlyn tried not to touch the books due to her “ability to read the echoes that attached themselves to certain inanimate objects - books, to be precise” (6). She remembered how she discovered her ability. Her parents were fighting, so she sought refuge in Frank Atwater’s bookstore. She was able to feel the echoes of books once she touched them. She told Frank, who suggested “Books are like people, Ashlyn. They absorb what’s in the air around them…Why not feelings?” (8).

As Ashlyn sorted books, she found...