ARC Review: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

The Lost Story
Author: Meg Shaffer
Publication: Ballantine Books (July 16, 2024)

Description: Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.

My Thoughts: THE LOST STORY was a magical experience. It is the story of two boys lost in a forest in West Virginia on an end-of-the-year field trip who come walking out six months after they disappeared. Rafe becomes an artist who doesn't remember what happened while he was lost in the woods. Jeremy becomes a man filled with secrets who has a talent for finding girls who are lost in the woods. 

Fifteen years after their reappearance, Emilie Wendell comes to find Jeremy to ask him to look for the sister she didn't know she had until after her mother's death and who disappeared in the same forest where Rafe and Jeremy disappeared. Jeremy hasn't seen Rafe since they walked out of the forest, but now he needs him if the search for Emilie's sister is to be successful. 

This story tells what happened when they all return to the Red Crow forest. It is filled with magic and romance and all the elements of a good fairy tale: heroes and villains, a lost princess, a magician and a storyteller to provide insights. 

I thought this story was amazing. It will certainly go on my keeper shelf when it was released. The characters were well-drawn and interesting people. The language was both down to earth and lyrical.

Favorite Quote:

They were gone long enough that people had stopped referring to the as "missing," which implied a temporary state of being, and now simply called them "lost." You looked for missing children. You mourned lost ones. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.