The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer - ARC Review

  

Book Review:

The Lost Story

by Meg Shaffer

Release Date: July 16, 2024 

Genre: Fantasy

Age Range: Adult

Goodreads Avg. Rating: 4.16 stars

This story was nothing short of beautiful and touching.

While I would love to dive into the world-building here it might be too much of a spoiler so I must resist. However, just know that if you choose to pick this book up there is a beautiful world waiting. This is a lite fantasy, maybe due to this the scale and details of said beautiful world aren't fully gone into. We are given a few great descriptions of places in West Virginia and elsewhere.

This book begins in West Virginia and will end there as well, with a few side trips in between.

Let's lay the cards on the table that this is a fairy tale of sorts. Thus the magic that comes up is ruled by the normal bounds of fairytale worlds. In this particular case, there is nothing over the top, no godmothers, pixie dust, or even healing enchantments unfortunately. In terms of magic, we don't see much but that doesn't take away the feel of it in the air through the story.

From the description I had assumed that Jeremy or Rafe might be the main characters. While this is partially true we are shown from Emilie first (for a long while which made me think it would be solely her POV). Emilie was a vet tech before her mother's recent passing. Now she is somewhat rudderless in the course of her life. Though she has always known she was adopted she only recently discovered that she had a sister and is desperately trying to find her. Jeremy Cox and Ralph Howell were best friends at 14 when they went missing on a school trip to Red Crow. Now Jeremy is a famed missing persons investigator while Rafe is a reclusive artist. Both men carry scars of their past even if only one of them remembers why.

Our story starts and somewhat centers around the search for Emilie's missing sister. After discovering that she had a living relative Emilie wants nothing more than to find out what happened to her. She disappeared in the same forest that Jeremy and Rafe had been missing for six months. After tracking Jeremy down and pleading for him to help he agrees, but knows that this case will require Rafe's help as well. That is a slight problem as they haven't spoken in about fifteen years. The second plot of the story expands from Rafe's perspective but spoilers would give away too much.

The story wrapped up in such a way that you could see our characters returning for a second novel. From the starting premise of the novel, that question/conflict was resolved, but as the story continued a new problem arose to be conquered. This was done fairly straightforwardly and with thought to how it would be hard emotionally. The second half did become more about Rafe's story than the others though. While our characters got a seemingly happy ending they still have one thing missing. This open possibility gives us hope for a return of the magical whimsy.

In the end, I'm so glad that I read this book. It was a different take on portal or urban fantasy than I have read lately. One counterbalance to the praise though would be that the timeline of the story can feel rushed. More so if you think about the past too much it seems odd that so much would have happened in just the six months. Otherwise, just an enjoyable book to read.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC to be able to review.

You can find this book from the below retailers or many others:

Amazon     Penguin Random House