Let me start by saying this is not at all my kind of book. Teens being kidnapped, tortured in this house of hell but for some unknown reason I couldn't put it down I read it in a matter of a few hours. I give this author kudos for keeping my interest and sucking me in. I really don't want to give to much away. So if you like thrillers this one is for you.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

I think The Lost just wasn't my type of read. It's well written and engaging, but I couldn't connect with this story. It's a good story full of twists and turns, but it's not for me. The right sort of reader will enjoy this one. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

"I could have saved him five days if he'd just asked me if I was an exciting person at the start."

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Sourcebooks Fire. Trigger warnings: death, torture, drowning, abduction, violence, guns.

When a number of teenagers go missing in their small town, best friends Piper and Hazel wonder whether there isn’t more to it. As they’re leaving a party one night, two rich and handsome local guys offer them a ride home, only to kidnap them and take them to a house in the woods. The house is a fortress of rooms and corridors, each of them a test of physical or psychological terror. Piper and Hazel have found the missing teenagers, but will they make it out alive to tell anyone?

I didn’t enjoy Natasha Preston’s The Cabin, but YA horror is such a niche genre that I decided to give her books another try. For the most part, I’m happy that I did. The Lost is no great work of art; I can think of a dozen better YA horror novels and a couple of horror films with similar plots. But it is entertaining, and there’s something to be said for fiction that’s just that. The writing leaves a lot to be desired. The dialogue is indistinguishable from the narrative, to the point where I had to backtrack a couple of times to see whether Piper was thinking or speaking, which always strikes me as lazy. There are better ways to get ideas across in narrative, and while it might suit its teenage audience, I like to think teenagers are more than capable of reading something more sophisticated.

Piper’s an improvement over the main character of The Cabin in a lot of ways. For one thing, she actually has a personality, and we’re able to see her toughness and stubbornness rather than just be told about it. She’s in a horrifying situation, but she manages to hold herself together and even resist her captors remarkably well. The rest of the characters are mainly background noise, and Piper’s relationship with her best friend, Hazel, is seriously underdeveloped. Hazel is barely present on the page. The villains are pretty flat with one exception, and the romance is a little rushed and instalove-ish; it needed to be introduced sooner so we had time to adjust to it before all hell breaks loose at the end.

Horror-wise, it’s neither bad nor great. Preston has some interesting things to bring to the captivity angles, and her torture methods are unusual. Except for the water torture and the Hunger Games challenges, they rely mainly on things like sleep deprivation or sensory overload, which will probably make it more accessible to people who are sensitive to body horror (i.e., there isn’t much blood/gore). Anyone familiar with horror film will see the twist coming a mile away (there’s a movie with almost that exact plot), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to watch it play out. To be honest, I’d be more interested in reading a sequel to this book than I was in reading this one, just to see where the characters take things next.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.