Laurence Fearnley

I saw this book and new I had to buy it.
The cover looks so pretty and a bit old-fashioned and I like the style a lot.

The story is about Edwin, 62, a photographer who has just retired and goes on a journey to find his mother, who left him as a child.
Matilda is 23, has just ended her engagement and moved out of the house she and her ex-boyfriend lived in together. She wants to make a documentary about elderly people and brings her camera with her all the time.
Together, they visit the sanatorium where Edwin grew up, follow leads to see people his mother knew and on the way get to know each other way more than they would have expected.

As the title says, it's "an unlikely love story". And a love story it is.
I read that many people had a problem with the age gap of 40 years between the protagonists, but I've never seen that as odd or strange.
For me, they seem to fit as a couple. They are similar and complement each other at the same time.
Both had imprinting childhoods, especially concerning their relationships to their mothers.
Edwins left him even if she said, she loves him. Matildas stayed, but would have loved to not have her around.

In the beginning, I wasn't sure which illness Matilda suffered from. I guessed wrong, but when she told Edwin, I was kind of glad, because I hadn't read many books about her illness and found the way Fearnley inculded it in her story fitting.
That Matilda has to learn to live with her illness and that it restricts her, but that she hasn't given up yet and even finds a new love in Edwin.

I liked the road-trip atmosphere of the book. I haven't read many books set in Australia and it was nice to read about the country.