Padlocks and letters

British author Phaedra Patrick likes to build her stories around meaningful objects, such as the charm bracelet in her debut novel The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper. In The Secrets of Love Story Bridge (2020), there are two such objects — or three if you want to count the bridge.

Mitchell Fisher, still mourning the death of his girlfriend, is a former bridge designer whose downhill career has fallen to removing the padlocks that people fasten to a certain bridge. Instead of carving their initials on trees, lovers signify the permanence of their love with padlocks, before tossing the keys into the river. The city wants the padlocks gone, and that's now Mitchell's job.

One day he sees a woman in a yellow dress attach a padlock, then fall into the river. He jumps in after her. After he saves her life, he becomes a hero, but somehow the woman remains anonymous. His daughter's music teacher, Liza, thinks the mysterious woman is her missing sister, and she enlists Mitchell's help in finding her.

Meanwhile Mitchell starts getting dozens of letters, mostly praising his heroism. And letters become the second physical object guiding the story, but not just these letters from strangers. Mitchell still writes letters to his late girlfriend almost daily, while being afraid to open a letter she wrote to him shortly before her accidental death. And then there is the letter he writes to Liza at the novel's conclusion. Letters, in the end, mean much more than padlocks.

Perhaps because of all those various objects battling for significance, this Patrick novel lacks the curious charm of her others.