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. It really makes you pause and reflect on the history of the items that you see, and their possible futures. I'm going to quote Marian Keyes, who once said that she thinks that to give people a book that doesn't have a happy ending is just rude, which I agree with!

Break Up With Fast Fashion by Lauren Bravo | Waterstones How To Break Up With Fast Fashion by Lauren Bravo | Waterstones

Lauren Bravo is witty and thoughtful in her exploration of our relationship with objects and trends, believing that – just as a pair of shoes can have many, many lives – so can the people that wear them. The crossover between donors/donations and their stories alongside Gwen and other volunteers' narratives sang for a while and then morphed from quirky to prosaic for me. The main character, Gwen, is relatable and likeable, even though she has her own issues that can be frustrating at times.At first this seemed an interesting angle on lifestyle choices at one of those fork in the road moments.

Preloved by Lauren Bravo | Goodreads

Donating is potentially a way of appeasing their guilt at having bought a life full of things that are ultimately going to end up in the bin.

Particularly when we're living among bleakness and uncertainty, it’s a privilege when somebody chooses to sit down with a book you've written and invested hours of their life with a character; you owe it to them to give that character a satisfactory ending. 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.