The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

 

My thoughts

This is the second book by this author. The first was THE WISHING GAME and I loved it. I also loved this one. It's a bit different and was inspired by THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. 

This is a very sweet but very intense story. It's about two boys. Two boys who were lost. For six months they were missing and no one knew where they were or even if they were alive. Then one day they are back....

Fifteen years later and the story begins. It actually begins earlier but it's told after they are grown now. After they returned and time went by and there was a reason for them to return to where they had been all those years before. Jeremy and Rafe grew up but didn't stay in touch all those years. After returning Jeremy's mother took him away and he just didn't keep in touch. Not exactly. 

Things happen and they have to work together to help a young lady find her sister. Emilie's sister went missing before Jeremy and Rafe. She was taken though. By a very bad man who meant her pain and suffering. Emilie asked Jeremy to help her as he was well known for finding missing girls and women. He was hesitant at first but once he finally got Rafe to help off they all went. Now it's hard to write without giving anything away so just suffice it to say that this story is magical. It's hard in places and so happy in others. It is a love story also. A sweet love story about two boys. 

I throughly enjoyed reading this book. It made me feel so much and for a while I believed in magic. In Red Crows and Unicorns. It made me smile and shed a few tears. Lots of tears in places. 

Most of the characters were likable. I did not want to like Rafe's dad. He was a jerk in so many ways. He was actually very horrible to Rafe. Rafe's choices were not what his father wanted. In the end I did find a tiny sliver of sympathy for him though. Just a bit.

Thank you #NetGalley, #RandomeHousePublishing, for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts.

Five big stars.

About

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.