by Meg Shaffer
At the library, I am fortunate to spend a lot of time in our children’s section, getting to experience the excitement of our youngest readers sharing the books they love. A steady theme, particularly with those getting into their first novels, is a love of magic, of stories that are easy to escape into and that evoke an immediate sense of wonder. As an adult, though perhaps not as regularly as some of our younger readers, I am sometimes lucky enough to find a book that brings that same sense of wonder for myself. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer is one of those books.
As boys, Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell disappeared into the woods. Six months later, they emerged – somehow stronger than they’d been when they disappeared, but with either no recollection of where they had gone, or without willingness to share. Fifteen years later, Jeremy is a professional people-finder with an uncanny ability to track down the lost. When Emilie Wendell, adopted at birth, learns that she had a biological sister who disappeared into the same woods as the boys, she seeks Jeremy’s help in finding out what happened. This ask, however, is bigger than anything Jeremy has taken on before – and he must enlist the help of Rafe, now living in artistic solitude. Readers soon learn that there is a connection between the three seekers that goes far beyond the search for a lost sister – and that what ensues could be more dangerous than any of them had anticipated. Add a splash of romance, a mysterious queen, and a magical land called Shanandoah, and you have a sure-fire formula for what I call an “unputdownable” read that speaks to the fantasy-seeker in all of us.
As you will likely gather from this review, I loved this book. The night I started it I was up far past midnight as I did not want to stop reading (yes, I eventually did put it down – but only because I had to work the next day). This book is a page-turner that touches on many themes – forbidden love, the bounds of family, and above all else, the longing for something bigger than what is immediately here. If you are looking to connect with your own sense of childlike wonder, check out The Lost Story.