Reading this book is a journey: a slow slog at times, a run downhill at others. Francesca is an American woman in her twenties, trying to find her way forward when she walks away from her marriage. She thinks she's found her purpose when she is assigned to start a nursery school in an extremely poor, isolated mountain village. She is too naive to see that she hasn't a clue as to how things are done in this village, socially or politically. It is fascinating and frustrating to follow her attempts at "civilizing" Santa Chionia.

Thank you Netgalley & Knopf Publishing for an eARC ♥️

The story takes place in a small Italian village in the 1960s, where the main character Francesca starts a nursery school. The village is pretty old-fashioned, with no modern amenities.

When a flood reveals some human remains, Francesca gets involved in a mystery. She agrees to help some of the villagers find their missing loved ones, which gets complicated. The story has a lot of different plot threads, including Francesca's school and personal life.

I thought the characters were well-written, and the setting was interesting. However, I have to admit that it was a bit of a struggle to finish the book. The pace was slow in some parts, and I found my attention wandering. It took me a while to get through it, but I did want to see how the story resolved.

Unfortunately, the ending was a bit of a letdown. I won't give away any spoilers, but some plot threads were left dangling. It was a bit disappointing after investing so much time in the book.

Francesca has been assigned to open a preschool in a remote mountain village in the toe of Italy. It may be 1960, but in many ways this village is stuck in the past, with no running water, no electricity, and roads not suitable for motorized transportation. And to make matters worse, a flood washes out the bridge shortly after her arrival, making it that much more difficult to communicate with her boss and family. Letters only arrive every once in a while, and the phone is hours of foot and bus travel away. Francesca is an outsider to this small, tight-knit community, which makes her job of recruiting students even harder when in some cases she is challenging their way of life (removing the chickens from the kitchen, for example).

When human bones are found in the foundation of the washed away post office, a local woman comes to her, convinced that the bones are that of her missing son, and that Francesca has the resources to find out if it's true. Francesca tries to help, but finds herself tangled in a complicated web of favors and lies, as everyone has a secret to hide.

I thought this was interesting. Though the mystery is what is pushed in the blurb, the book is really about Francesca and her time in Santa Chionia. I can't say that she makes the smartest decisions, but she is definitely dedicated to what she is doing, even when faced with customs and languages she does not know. The setting is what is truly the star here. When you look for photos of the Calabria region, it seems impossible that people could build entire villages there and live in them for centuries. Unfortunately, many have now been abandoned, but that only adds to the intrigue. It was Francesca's struggles against the limits of her location that really kept me reading.

BOOK REPORT
Received a complimentary copy of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia, by Juliet Grames, from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

I spent entirely too much of my life on this book.

It started out interesting, turned off convoluted-y (and stayed that way), and eventually began to bore me senseless. Unfortunately, by that point I was so far into it that I felt like I had to finish, just to find out who exactly did what to whom, and who the “bad guys” really were.

Oh, also it was too long and the author, bless her heart, engaged in some mighty affected writing, complete with high-faultin’ word choices the reminded me something a writing instructor once shared with several journalist-wannabes, me amongst them: “Don’t use a quarter word when a nickel one will do.”

And I don’t know if it’s just my attention span has been completely janked lately because of doomscrolling on social media—and consuming WAY too much political journalism—or what, but keeping up with all those characters was just about more than I could do.

Eventually, it took me several days to finish The Lost Boys of Chionia. I wound up taking it one section at a time.

But, on a bright note, during that stretch I also watched the movie The Banshees of Inisherin with my husband and some friends, and while it was seriously weird, it was also good, and weirdly funny at points. Here’s a link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11813216/

And while I am thinking about movies, I should note, as well, that we watched The Holdovers recently, and it, too, was really good: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14849194...

If you’d like to read something with a little bit more nuance to it, check out one Heidi Gorecki's review of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

DESCRIPTION
One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy (“Terrific” –Boston Globe).

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.

Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.

Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

This book was like getting into a conversation with someone where it should take 5 minutes, but ends up being 45 because of all the rabbit trails and side anecdotes that really didn’t matter but were thrown in anyways. And then you realize-mid monologue that you have no idea what you all started talking about in the first place. There were so many things going on and nothing going on all at the same time. Also so many characters it felt impossible to keep track of or remember who was who, and how they were related.

Outside of the last 15% of it that got interesting, I got so bored that I had to take a break and read another book every few chapters. And ironically each time I went back to this one because of all the rabbit-trailing I didn’t even need to try to refresh where I left off because I’d be in a different rabbit trail on this new chapter.

When it all boils down to it, the story really was very little about the “lost boy” - it was about Franca trying to constantly be savior and navigating a little town in Italy that was very poor, backwards and corrupt, its intersecting and overlapping relationships, and deception. Yeah there was some mystery as she played Nancy Drew at a couple of the townspeople’s request (which was also weird why she took this upon herself honestly) and tried to unravel everyone’s secrets, but again, it was so slow, repetitive and interspersed I never got invested until the very end and then it ended up the way I had figured. It just felt like it went around and around the same details and hurdles time and again without much progress and I lost the plot.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are mine.

Set in a mountain village in 1960 Italy, when a skeleton turns up after a devastating flood, a young American woman trying to set up a nursery school ends up embroiled in the deeply buried secrets of a close-knit community that is hostile to her prying.

The book was interesting but I would of enjoyed it better if there weren't as many side stories in it. Hard to keep track of who is doing what. All in all it wasn't a bad book.

The lost boy of Santa Chionia by Juliet Greames is a book about Francis who in the 1960s goes to Santa Choinia to start a preschool and help mothers in that isolated village learn better ways to take care of their children and their entire family. She arrives during the October rains and during the rain fall the post office is knockdown and a body is discovered something the locals are fine with talking about but doesn’t waste much time pondering over. I would really love to say I totally enjoyed this book but I absolutely did not. I read many many books and have no issues reading and comprehending and although sometimes I do run across a word I am not familiar with this is what makes the dictionary so handy but in this book there were so many times I had to stop and look up a word and it just happened to often for me to enjoy it. Not to mention all the locals in their names I found she went off into other stories and I lost the narrative I’m sure someone like this book but I must be honest and say I totally absolutely did not like it I usually can find something positive to say about a book but sadly not with this one. I was really looking forward to reading it, thankfully I have many other books that I can choose from. I will say in the beginning I was so into the story but around chapter 15 or 16 it just started losing me. Please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Set in 1960s Calabria, a young woman arrives to set up a preschool program and stumbles upon town secrets when a skeleton is discovered after a flood. I loved the setting of this story - the town, the mountains, the quirky customs, and the landlady Cicca! However, the mystery part was almost non existent. The story meandered quite a bit in the middle and at times tried to cover too many things. I will absolutely read more by this author. Thanks to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book!

My thanks for the ARC goes to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf. I'm voluntarily leaving a review.

Genre: Literary Fiction, General Fiction, Historical Fiction
Spice Level: There's references to sex and some on the page
Language: Some swearing, including a few f-bombs
Format: The protagonist occasionally breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience or makes a comment from 60 years in the future.

*THE LOST BOY OF SANTA CHIONIA* takes place in the 1960s in a tiny mountain town with Greco-Italian roots. Francesca is young and starry-eyed about doing social work—wisely, the author has the character comment about how social work among the poor is not always what the people there need (a nod to modern sensibilities).

Francesca (Franca) is housing with a cantankerous woman, she's accosted by other women to prove that the skeleton that's been unearthed is their loved one, and she attempting to start a preschool amongst people who don't want her meddling in their business. It's a rough go for her—very much a two-steps forward, one-step back scenario. Honestly, sometimes it's more like three-steps back.

The plot meanders. People's motivations for their actions are muddled. Poor Franca is doing her best amongst these suspicious-of-strangers people, but she is in OVER her head and doesn't even know it.

Endings are critical for me. This ending is ambiguous—which can be okay. I feel like the book is more literary fiction than a mystery though, and I was expecting a mystery with all of those expectations, so that threw me off. The book is enjoyable but also a little frustrating, reflecting Franca's own experiences.

If you love books that feel like a biography, this story is perfect for you. It's got mystery elements, but it's really more of a general fiction or literary novel.

Happy reading!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Video review coming soon on my YouTube channel, The Caffeinated Book Wyrm: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwssAW54PdVvCE2Kji4M_Ig

4 out of 5 stars

Where to begin? I loved the story. Yes, there seemed to be three separate plot lines going on, but they were all involving (or being investigated by) the main character, Francesca (Franca, Frank). I thought the character building was fairly decent, and she did an amazing job really putting the reader in this location, Santa Chionia.

I have never had a problem with rambling, slice of life tales. I enjoyed Franca's day-to-day interactions with her prickly (did you see what I did there? No? Oh. You'll have to read the book to understand the reference) landlady/roommate. I was truly curious who was under the post office. But I felt that the background characters, from the women looking for proof that it was their missing family member under the post office to the mafia-esque hooligans to the suspicious priest, were lacking the same attention to personality and individualism that we got with Franca, Cicca, and even her friend back in the States, Alexis.

This book was loooooong. It took me 10 days to read this book. That includes a 4 1/2 day long holiday/weekend. Now, understand that I am no stranger to long books. This was around 400 pages, but I have read 1000+ page books that felt shorter than this book, and it is not entirely, or even mostly, due to the rambling nature of the storyline.

It was the words. Not the Italian/Greco words, either, as I've taken three semesters in Italian at Ohio State. It was the English words I kept having to highlight and get the definitions for. I've never had so many highlights in a book. Ever.
nepenthe
ferule
truculent
scutcher - which I could never find a definition for
wether - this is not a misspelling
punctilious
histrionics
autochthonous - this word is used throughout the book and made my brain short circuit
sagittate
mollycoddled
pullulating

I could go on and on. And on. And on.

It was so excessive, I took seven days just getting through the first 40%. I read the last 60% in about three days.

But I was hooked and vested in the stories and characters, which is why this gets a solid 4 stars. I would definitely read more from Grames, especially as she develops her writing going forward.

Interesting historical fiction/mystery, but wayyyyy too slow to get started. I understand the need for social and geographical background in the beginning, but it wasn't compelling enough to drive the story early on. Unfortunately this made it very hard to stay motivated to finish the book.

I was a big fan of Juliet Grames's first book so I was excited to get an early copy of her second novel. What I loved: rather than another cliched Italian novel about finding love in Tuscany or a glamorous Amalfi Coast experience, the author focuses on a lesser known region of Italy (Calabria) and to top it off a Greek-dialect speaking region (these still exist in Italy today). She really captured the atmosphere of a small hilltop town in rural Italy in the 1960s. The characters in the book were well-developed and were believable for a small town in Italy of that time. What was a little tricky for me: the number of characters, their complicated names and their relationships to each other! As you come to find in the book, in these small towns everyone seems to be related to everyone else. I wish I had taken notes of who everyone was as we went along and how they were connected. That might have helped me untangle the mystery as the book goes along. I did like this book, but I think it's one for very attentive readers to get the full experience. Also, there's a lot of vocabulary that challenged me in the book (in a good way). I read a lot but the author uses some vocabulary I haven't seen before. Again helpful if you are an attentive reader. All in all, I really enjoyed the book and would recommend to anyone who liked Grames's first novel or more off-beat stories about Italy.

Initially, the author drew me in with great descriptive writing. That changed as the author muddled together stories that didn’t join together. There were so many characters I was loosing track of who was who. The story would move at times and then slow down to the point of boredom. The ending was a huge disappointment, and I felt cheated at spending my time reading the book.

My review is voluntary and all comments and opinions are my own.

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is written from the POV of a schoolteacher out to save the children of a remote and somewhat backward village. There is a mystery in this story, but it takes a long time to come to light. In the beginning, much of the story is centered around Francesca and her trip to reach the village as well as her introduction to a few of the village leaders. It is true that after a great flood, a human bone is found under the wrecked post office, but the bone is definitely the least important part of the story.

I almost gave up on this in the beginning. Most people would say I’m highly educated and yet, I still had to stop and look up many words, not because I didn’t know what they meant but because I didn’t understand the context in which the author meant to use them. There is also a proliferation of characters, all with Italian names. I often had to turn back and forth to see who was friend and who was foe. This never pleases me.
What this resulted in for me was a very bumpy, hiccupy sort of read. None of this is wrong except those of us who like to have a name or word in our minds, a rhythm of sorts, have an enormous chore of reading smoothly.

Don’t get me wrong, there is some beautiful descriptive writing in this book. Some of the onerous words I am speaking of are used in an appreciable way to create a feeling of suspense, tension, and scenic beauty.

This all snuck up on me, and I began to have a feeling for the story. Unfortunately, this did not happen until I was possibly halfway through the book. What kept me reading was that the thread of the story began to be easier to follow, the characters or at least a part of them became more familiar and as I said, the descriptive writing was always there.

In summary, an interesting story, but one very difficult to discern.

It's difficult to say which is more depressing, the corruption of the village or the naivete of the narrator. I'm inclined to say it's the latter. The narrator presents herself to us as a woman of experience and at least some discernment and maturity, not a doe-eyed innocent, so you can't help thinking she should have known better than to go blundering around making life worse for people. She does share the occasional wise thought on how tough it is to help people in dire need without inadvertently doing some damage, but these just don't translate all that well to the actual story. Also, the love triangle nearly gave me whiplash! On the plus side, though, there's some very strong descriptive writing.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

When she came to the isolated town of Santa Chionia, Italy, American Franca Loftfield had the best of intentions. Working with a charitable organization, she intends to put together a nursery for three- and four-year-old children, something the town has done without for far, far too long. However, after her arrival, terrible flooding reveals a grisly secret. After washing away part of the post office, human remains lay revealed beneath. A skeleton has been secreted away under the building for years. Who could it be?

The local authorities are not too interested in solving the crime. There is not strong police force in the town. The remains can be shipped away for investigation … whenever the actual police get around to it. This being 1960, the country is caught up in a lot of nonsense about where funds are allocated, who gets assistance, and when. Classism is thriving across the country, and it’s certainly alive and well in Santa Chionia.

So, as Franca looks into the matter for her own interest, she soon becomes the mouthpiece for two local women who have lost men that might well have become the skeleton in question. Emilia Voontà’s son Leo Romeo went missing a few years ago, and she fears he is the skeleton. Vannina Favasuli was abandoned to raise six children by herself when her husband Dominic “Mico” Scordo suddenly chose to emigrate to the United States … and effectively fell off the face of the world. She wants to know: Did he even manage to get out of Santa Chionia?

Besides doing the work she has come here for, interviewing the families of candidates for the first wave of nursery entries, and trying to get local help to work in the place, Franca asks a few questions for these women. At first, she is humored, but one question too many soon results in some strange behavior from the local men in charge.

Is the situation really achieving a whole new level of tension, and has her questions put Franca’s life in danger? Or is she reading too much sinister intent into what may well be little more than coincidences? Juliet Grames pens a page turning historical suspense yarn about a woman out of her comfort zone with the meaty novel, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia.

There is a special delight to be found in fish out of water tales. Franca’s adventures in Santa Chionia certainly fall under that umbrella. Despite growing up with a large Italian American family in the states, she has come to this place without any real ties to the locals. She’s rooming in the house of a woman who refuses to let her do her own laundry, she’s interacting with a group of men who exert quite a bit of influence despite their protestations that the town is really run by the wives of all the families, and she is trying to balance her American expectations with the local realities in regard to behaviors, crime, punishment, and inquiry. Along the way, she has been learning an important lesson: It is not enough to make friends when coming to a new place. You must be certain make the right friends.

That is one of the more frustrating angles to Franca’s journey. She is too American to realize the traditional structure of checks, balances, and hierarchy in place for this town. Her oversights will be regularly challenged, and when she stubbornly refuses to bend, she makes a few enemies. Or a few of the wrong enemies.

Now, when I say frustrating, I am not referring to Grames’ writing or storytelling. This is the much more wished for frustration of feeling for a character who finds herself confronting cultural and social constructs and bias she is powerless to fully understand and is therefore vulnerable to.

The writing is well crafted. Grames’ sentences flow well together, and the information imparted is high despite a sort of lackadaisical story pacing in the opening sequences. The author is just as interested in the day-to-day details of the protagonist working in this place as she is in the mystery/suspense aspects that intrude upon the normal world. It is a delicate balance between these elements and shows both a terrific confidence on the author’s part that she can present both sections as interesting as well as a terrific craft to actually pull this off. When the book is at its best, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is literary suspense of the high order.

For page turning thrills, The Lost Boy of Santa Clara is certainly difficult to put down. While the historical angle is not as up front and intensely woven into the work as some readers might wish (this novel takes place during the lead in to the infamous and violent Years of Lead), the period nevertheless provides a fine excuse for the isolation that Franca experiences. The writing is clear and propulsive, the pacing is deceptively leisurely, and the story does a fine job of balancing the everyday responsibilities of putting together a new institution in a place that’s hesitant to embrace change alongside the more suspenseful mystery at play involving the skeleton and possible conspiracy surrounding it. Grames’ book is a terrific read.
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A special thank you to Alfred A. Knopf and NetGalley for offering an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is presented as a mystery, but is more historical/cultural fiction (though mystery is involved). The setting is everything - the Calabria region in southern Italy in 1960, mountainous, remote, few if any modern amenities, very traditional people with very distinct, insular local customs. Francesca Loftfield, and American whose mother came from the region, is in Santa Chionia for a nonprofit attempting to open a nursery school. She is fluent in Italian, but not the local dialect, and not fluent in the local customs or social hierarchy at all. Shortly after she arrives, there is a bad flood and the only bridge to the main road is washed away leaving the town even more isolated, and a skeleton is found in the foundations of the Post Office. When an old woman comes to her asking for her to find out if the body is her son, Francesca begins asking questions that draw her deeply into the village's secrets and lives and danger. She is not prepared. As you learn about her new friends and enemies, Francesca's own life and secrets are revealed, and the whole story is psychologically rich and intense. The mystery is solved, but at what cost? All the characters are well drawn and vivid, but Santa Chionia itself is the star. A memorable experience.

This was an interesting historical fiction story. The characters were well written and the setting was great. A good fast long weekend read.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book. This was a very interesting read but the execution was off for me. I enjoyed our MC but there were so many characters etc it was confusing. I ended up DNF'ing this title unfortunately.