Laugh-out-loud funny but also poignant and tender, Preloved is an absorbingly special debut novel. I devoured in equal measure the delicious descriptions of food and the moving vignettes of preloved treasures peppered throughout the book, while the nineties and noughties nostalgia had me gasping with pleasure.' Laura Price, author of Single Bald Female Lauren Bravo is a freelance journalist who writes about fashion, popular culture, food, travel and feminism, for titles including Grazia, Stylist, Cosmopolitan and Sunday Times Style. She volunteers in a charity shop once a week (partly to get dibs on all the best clothes).

Preloved — Lauren Bravo

While all Gwen’s friends are “procreating in the countryside”, she is single, lonely and now, jobless. So she begins anew in the place where all things get a second chance: a charity shop. Preloved is a funny and touching read.’ A heartwarming tale of friendship, loss and being true to yourself, regardless of expectations.' Red magazine But life also has another side for things redundant, it is repurposed. Redundant things can be repurposed and find useful and fulfilling lives. The book points out that this is how life works. One man's treasure is another man's junk. One man's ex-wife is the love of another man's life. As someone who is currently volunteering at a charity shop, this was very relatable and gave me a good few laughs. This book also has little chapters in between the ‘main’ chapters telling the history of some items that have ended up on the charity shop shelves, and I really loved that. These tales also ended up weaving in and out of the main storyline. It really makes you pause and reflect on the history of the items that you see, and their possible futures. There was one that detailed the journey of a fast fashion party top, that was particularly significant, and has stayed with me since I read it.Preloved has taken up residence in my heart and I will be recommending it to everyone I know. It's completely enchanting, completely captivating, completely brilliant, I adored everything about it. It has so much heart and warmth, while Gwen is so well-written and relatable. I was already a fan of Lauren Bravo's writing, and now I'm officially obsessed. The individial chapters about the 'life of donated items' are quite clever & the story of Gwen was a lovely thread pulling everything together ..

Preloved: A sparklingly witty and relatable debut novel

With her redundancy money she decides that it will buy her time for a few months whilst she looks for something else. She decides to volunteer at a charity shop. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Definitely one of my favourite books that I’ve read so far this year! Preloved is full of sharp observations on life, loss, regret and self-preservation... spilling over with wit and hope. Cleverly interwoven with stories of the myriad reasons items find their way into charity shops, the joy, friendship and ultimate enlightenment Gwen discovers offers a quirky and poignant reminder that one person's trash is always somebody else's treasure.' Julietta Henderson, author of The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman Then she’s let go from a job she drifted into a decade ago and never left, and Gwen realizes it’s time to make a change, starting with cleaning out her apartment. In the charity shop where she literally and metaphorically unloads her baggage, she discovers a group of weird and wonderful people devoted to finding a new home for donated items that have lost their use elsewhere. Gwen volunteers there—and finds a new home for herself among her fellow workers while discovering joy in the untold stories of secondhand things. If clothes can get a second chance, why can’t we? Brimming with life, love, and the stories bound up in even the most everyday items, The Second Chance Store is a tale of friendship, loss, and dusting yourself off and starting over—a novel filled with humor and a testament to the enduring power and joy of charity shops.You have to prioritise work, family commitments, children, potentially partners, potentially ageing parents (over) friendships, and it becomes much harder. There can be a real disconnect between the friendships we imagined we would have and the friendships that we actually have.” As we watch Gwen clamber over familial relationships, potential romances and sex as well as as best friend who seems impossibly far away, Lauren believes “ Preloved is definitely a love story about friendships more than anything else.” Gwen has been waiting to hear about a promotion at her work when she is made redundant – the real reason for which is revealed much later on in the book (but no spoilers) and if she’s being honest she feels as though she’s stagnating. Her relationships with her friends don’t seem to be going anywhere, to the point that she actually avoids spending too much time with them. She’s been isolating herself almost since the day she told her fiance that their relationship was over 5 years ago.

Lauren Bravo - David Higham Associates Lauren Bravo - David Higham Associates

Preloved is full of sharp observations on life, loss, regret and self-preservation.' Julietta Henderson, author of The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman Optimistic and engaging… intimate and joyful… We’re waiting for Preloved to be optioned by Reese Witherspoon or at least adapted into a binge-worthy Netflix series…’ Glamour

The narrative follows Gwen who is in her mid-thirties drifting through life as she finds herself unemployed and still single while her friends are all married and busy popping out kids. She speaks little and rarely to her parents whose whole lives seem to revolve around the council’s wheelie-bin timetable. Gwen wants to be a better friend, a better daughter and does her best to reconnect. Her social life used to happen around her and it was easier to go along. But now the pull of a hot bath and cosy night in seems more appealing. Her oldest friend Suze was her saviour but now they barely talk. Gwen doesn’t have any problem making friends, it’s keeping them that she struggles with. As she is sitting in a restaurant eating a solo dinner to celebrate her birthday (thus showing us, the readers, the isolated life she has made for herself), she starts to put together a to-do list of all the tasks she has been avoiding for far too long. One of these chores is to dispose of the engagement ring that she has been holding on to since the abrupt ending of the relationship. She takes this, and other items she has been keeping, to a local charity shop and so starts the journey to her new life. Preloved is, to me, a story of connections, of memories and about how you need to face the past to move into the future.