📖 Book Description
How could the scuzziest man in the world and the kindest woman alive ever fall in love?
Arnie Garth has it all. An LA porn empire, a gorgeous pornstar mistress and a legendary wife. Unfortunately, he has the morals of a sewer rat. And when he finds himself on his premature deathbed, he receives some unexpected news: he has no soul.
According to the Keeper of Souls, he was born without one. A heavenly clerical error. His was mistakenly given to the baby girl behind him in the queue – a sweet, selfless Englishwoman named Noreen Milburn, who now has two.
To avoid a fate worse than death, Arnie has just one week to find Noreen, fall genuinely in love with her, and make her fall for him too.
No explanations. No shortcuts. Just real love. The problem? Noreen is a sheep-loving Lake District shepherdess who prefers charity work to men, while Arnie’s world is full of porn stars, a furious wife and a hired hitman.
The route to true love runs from LA to Cumbria to Las Vegas. But will it find its way home?
📚Book Information
Lost Souls by Paul A. Mendelson
Publisher
The Book Guild
Available formats
📖 Digital Edition • ISBN: 9781835745960 • Pages: 248 • Published: 28 July 2026
📕 Paperback • ISBN: 9781835744642 • Pages: 288 • Published: 28 July 2026
Find out more
Amazon • Goodreads • The StoryGraph
🌟 Book Tour
I’m delighted to be taking part in the Virtual Book Tour for Lost Souls, hosted by Zooloo’s Book Tours from 28 July to 10 August 2026. The full tour schedule can be found below.
My sincere thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book, and to The Book Guild for providing a paperback review copy.
As always, my review is based solely on my own reading experience and reflects my honest opinion.
👤 About the Author
Paul A. Mendelson is a BAFTA-nominated screenwriter and novelist. He created some of BBC’s most successful sit-coms, shown in the US and over 70 countries, and acclaimed British drama. He now writes screenplays and novels, for adults and middle-grade. Paul scripts his novels, three have been optioned for movies, including his latest ‘Seville’. His novel Must Have GSOH was the only UK Finalist in the 2023 Screencraft LA Cinematic Book Contest.
🔗 Connect with the Author
👩🏻💻 My Review
Lost Souls is certainly one of the most unusual books I’ve read in quite some time. The story opens with an introduction to Ambrose, a mysterious figure with a rather unusual role, and his perspective immediately sets the tone, giving the novel a fun, entertaining and wonderfully imaginative beginning. Discovering that Arnie has spent his entire life without a soul because of a heavenly clerical error is such an original premise that I couldn’t resist finding out where the story would go from there.
Arnie Garth isn’t an easy character to warm to. Wealthy, loud, self-centred and convinced the world revolves around him, he couldn’t be more different from Noreen Milburn, whose kindness, generosity and love of animals make her much easier to like. Although she’s not especially comfortable around people, her passion for helping others shines through. Bringing these two very different characters together makes for an entertaining and often amusing journey as their worlds unexpectedly collide. For me, Noreen was undoubtedly the heart of the novel. Her compassion and genuine warmth balanced Arnie’s overbearing personality perfectly, and I found myself far more invested in her journey than his. My favourite character, however, was Ambrose. His appearances added some of the book’s funniest and most memorable moments, and every time he appeared I found myself smiling. He brought a welcome sense of warmth and charm to the story.
There are plenty of humorous situations throughout the novel, and I smiled more than once at the increasingly ridiculous circumstances Arnie finds himself in. It’s an incredibly imaginative concept, and when the humour lands it really does raise a smile.
That said, I think this may come down more to my own expectations than anything else. I found myself anticipating a more traditional dynamic between Arnie and Noreen, perhaps with Arnie trying to win her over, and when the story didn’t follow that path I felt a little out of step with it. In hindsight, that isn’t a flaw in the book at all, just a reflection of what I was expecting going in.
I think this ultimately comes down to personal taste. While I appreciated the originality of the story and enjoyed stepping outside my usual reading preferences, the humour and pacing meant I never quite connected with it as much as I’d hoped. That said, I was still happy to read it through to the end, and I can easily see how readers who enjoy quirky, satirical humour would find a lot to enjoy here.
Overall, Lost Souls is a quirky, imaginative and often funny novel built around a genuinely original idea. Although it didn’t quite match my personal reading tastes, I can easily imagine fans of offbeat humour, larger-than-life characters and satirical comedy thoroughly enjoying the journey.
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DISCLOSURE: I received a review copy of this book from The Book Guild via Zooloo’s Book Tours.
As always, my thoughts are honest and my own.
This review is original content.
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