The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer | Fantasy Review

Le Sigh.

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

Released July 2024, 352 pgs

Source: Purchased from Book of the Month

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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 2 Cents for Free!

Alas, this one wasn't nearly as fanciful and wondrous as the blurb and the early reviews made me believe. It wasn't terrible by any means but it took me a full month to finish and that was by sheer stubbornness because I bought the hardcover from BOM.

The Lost Story is about a long-lost girl and a man who has a talent for finding lost people. As a young teen Ralph/Rafe (it'll make sense, sort of, if you read the book) and his best friend Jeremy were lost in the wilderness for months and assumed dead but instead they were busy falling in love and having a wild adventure. Honestly, I'd like to read that story because this one takes half the book to actually get moving and then things move so fast that it was difficult to appreciate the fantasy world. I waited and waited for a unicorn fantasyland to happen and then it does but it's just mostly bow and arrows and danger and a run-in with a really shitty man. All things I'm terribly bored by. You might not be though?

I wanted to love it, I kept trying to love it, but I just didn’t love it. 2.75 stars because although it's not horrid, it's not memorable either and I ended up feeling disappointed like this poor lab here.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐.75

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