Once upon a time in West Virginia, two boys went missing.

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

My Review

First you were missing. Then you were lost. Then you were forgotten.

Hey, I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted a book review. But I caught Book Indecision Syndrome last week after reading more of One Piece, so that’s why it’s been over two weeks. Sorry.

Anyway so, this book ended up disappointing me. Slightly. I’d really wanted to like The Lost Story. The premise  interesting and unique and it has a lovely cover. But then, I don’t know, I guess I hyped it up way too much in my head, so when the book started to go a little downhill for me, I was more disappointed than I normally would’ve been.

Let’s just get into it. Okay, so I really, really liked the first third of the book. I thought the intrigue and buildup was great. But once the group actually got to the magical fantasy world (known as Shanandoah) the novel started to irritate me a little.   I don’t really know why – it was probably a mix of different things, I guess.

For one thing, the world building took a dive. Like, without the intrigue and Shanandoah no longer being of the unknown, it kind of fell flat on its face. To me anyway. The magical fairytale aspect was gone entirely (which might have been the intention, IDK) and I realized that that was the only aspect the magical fantasy land had going for it in my mind. And Shanandoah didn’t live up to the hype for me, I guess, and that was probably my biggest issue with it. Also, the magic system was poorly defined and I had multiple issues with it that I don’t feel like going into.

I did like some of the cast, however. Rafe was the most interesting and compelling character in the book for me, and I enjoyed Jeremy and Emilie quite a bit as well. But after they crossed the border to Shanandoah, they and their dynamics with one another got marginally less interesting. And sorry, but Rafe and Jeremy’s romance really annoyed me. Mostly because it only got development from Rafe’s side. Jeremy was just immediately in love with him the second he laid eyes on him as teenagers, which is one of the absolute worst of romance tropes because then authors decide they don’t have to build on or give a reason (or reasons) that Character A is in love with Character B. It’s just so, ugh, and I really think it did a disservice to both Jeremy’s character, as well as his romance with Rafe.

Skya was the absolute worst though. She’s hyped up to be super amazing, and that might be part of the reason that I hated her. Also, for whatever reason, everything she did irritated me. And her relationship with Emilie never felt genuine to me. Maybe if she’d left to seek out her sister herself I’d feel like she cared about her the way the book says she does, but she didn’t so I didn’t. (I don’t care if she’s a queen or not, Shanandoah is a magic realm and they were fine without her before she got there as far as I can tell.) Sure, she got a beautiful room set up for her, but she basically just sat on her ass and waited for her sister to show up. For fifteen years.

The characters near complete disregard for the Earth dimension really bothered me. Like, it would have been so much more interesting to me if they came to realize that Earth has some good stuff too, that there were good things to be found besides moms, and that you can’t just go live in a magic world and forget all your problems forever. Which, I guess was one of the book’s points – and it does explore it (a little) – but I don’t like the way that it was executed. At all. (We the readers live on Earth, and the author makes it seem either boring and awful. I didn’t like that).

Also, the “big choice” near the end of the book is ultimately made for the characters, so it felt anticlimactic. Both climaxes also felt extremely anticlimactic, because The Lost Story‘s foreshadowing is so terrible and unsubtle that you know everything is gonna be alright both times. Also, everything in this book is ridiculously predictable, and that annoys me.

The thing that irritated me the most, though, was the Storyteller’s Corner section of the book. They interrupted the flow of the story, and needlessly clarified things or padded out the book unnecessarily. This line in particular irritated me especially:

“I wrote the story. I don’t make the rules.”

YES YOU LITERALLY DO! That’s the whole point of crafting and telling a story! The rules just don’t write themselves – they have to come from someone’s brain. I hate it when authors say crap like this, it feels like they’re trying to sound clever or pushing accountability off of themselves or something. (Neither works by the way – you just sound pretentious.) I don’t know. This is just something that makes my blood boil whenever I hear/read it. And to read it in such a meta way, in a work of fiction no less, felt extremely conceited to me. To write a story, you have to write the rules surrounding it. There’s no other way. Also, it was extremely annoying.

But the book wasn’t all bad. Like I said, the first third of the book was great – not to mention the ending was decent. I also liked that the book has a map of Shanandoah at the beginning. Maps in books are great. The characters also had their moments – except for Skya – and I did like them for the most part. The dialogue was also well written and natural for the most part, though it did get a little too quippy at certain times. (Enough so to be irritating.) The descriptions were also well done, and I liked that the book ended somewhat open ended, but mostly not. (If there’s ever a sequel however, I’m probably not going to read it.) The best part of the book for me, and the reason it got three stars in the first place, was because it has a great recipe at the end of the novel.

I do find it funny though, that this cover has been so often compared to the Chronicles of Narnia, and, one one occasion was called Narnia meets CSI. Because I didn’t think it was like that at all. (Also, the person who said the thing about CSI must not have seen it, because it wasn’t like that at all. Jeremy just had a magical tracking ability, there wasn’t any science or any biochemical testing whatsoever.) I thought it felt more like Peter Pan or even The Wizard of Oz, especially vibes wise. Actually, the only thing that reminded me of Narnia was kids falling into a magical world and then eventually leaving for some reason or another. (Though the plot of The Silver Chair is brought up and it sounded a bit like the plot of this book. I admittedly don’t know hardly anything about the Narnia books aside from the first four.

I think people who greatly enjoy and have nostalgia for classic fantasy fiction like I’ve listed above will enjoy The Lost Story. Also, those who like certain romance tropes will probably like it as well. If you’re expecting a fleshed out fantasy world with a well written magic system, however, you might be a little disappointed. This book is far too whimsical for that, and it’s not interested in telling its story that way. (Sorry if this review got a little ranty BTW – I had some things to say, lol.)

As always, thank you so much for reading, and have a wonderful day/night!

See ya ~Mar

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