I have been MIA when it comes to NetGalley reviews due to having given birth in March. But, as my sanity slowly starts to return, so shall I try to catch you good people up on what I have read.

How does this have good reviews?

This book was awful. I literally do not care if the author reads this review. Very poorly written. Could have done without the “narrator” moments. The characters were inconsistent. Just terrible. Do not read this.

That is my whole review. Thank you.

FIVE HUGE STARS!! I love this one so so much.

I had high hopes for this one after loving the author's debut last year, and it smashed through my expectations! It was even better than I expected.

This book was a magical, whimsical adult fairytale. It was filled with love, queer representation, and made me feel like a kid again while I was reading it! This is a book for anyone who grew up wishing for their Hogwarts letter or checked every closet for a passageway to Narnia. My inner child loved every moment and never wanted this to end.

I loved how the real world action blended into the fantasy world action. The structure of the story and the extremely loveable characters made the reading experience a treat for my eyes and my imagination.

4.5 stars! The Lost Story is a modern day take on Chronicles of Narnia. It follows best friends Jeremy and Rafe who are "lost" in the forest when they are teenagers but they were actually in a fantasy world. They part ways but are brought back together fifteen years later to help Emilie find her missing sister. While helping her, they work through issues of their past and help Rafe remember what happened in the forest.

I really liked this book more that I expected! I was not expecting the romance element but it worked great between Jeremy and Rafe. The banter between the characters was fun. The fantasy world was interesting and pulled from different mythologies and old fantasy stories.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Two boys are lost in the forest in West Virginia, only to show up six months later with no recollection of where they were or how they had survived.

Fifteen years later, Rafe is a reclusive artist, living in his father’s old hunting cabin, with no memory of what happened in the woods. Jeremy has become famous for finding missing persons. He is the only person that can help Emilie find her sister, who vanished in the same forest as Jeremy and Rafe.

Jermey is convinced they met Emilie’s sister during their time in the woods, and Rafe is the only one who can lead them to the hidden place of Shanondoah. As they embark on a journey to discover lost memories, secrets begin to unravel which allow Rafe and Jeremy to slowly piece together their shared past and hopefully form their future. But this is only the beginning of the story, isn’t it?

Read if you like:
- fairytales
- found family
- magic

I love it when a book takes me by surprise and this one did just that. I loved every second of it. The world building is immersive and beautiful. The characters are captivating and lovable. The exploration of friendship and romance was very well done. I loved every element of magic and whimsy and fairytale, which the author did a great job balancing with the hard hitting topics of adoption, suicide, mental illness, and family drama. Highly recommend picking this one up, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for a free digital copy of this book. This is my honest review. Publication date: July 16, 2024.

**Many thanks to NetGalley, Random House - Ballantine, and Meg Shaffer for an ARC of this book!**

Have you ever seen a movie you used to LOVE as a kid (but haven't seen in 20+ years) pop on TV...and you just feel COMPELLED to watch it?

Maybe you can't even remember WHY you loved it, but you DO remember quoting lines with your friends, and spending many a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of the screen, whiling away the summer hours. So with all of this nostalgia bubbling inside of you, you turn the aforementioned film on and settle in, ready for laughs and to have that same fun, carefree feeling that can only be found in youth.

But then, after about 20 minutes of watching, you start to wonder...I actually LIKED this movie? I actually watched it VOLUNTARILY? And worst of all...I honestly found these jokes FUNNY?

This sort of let-down, confused feeling kept washing over me as I made my way through one of my most anticipated reads of 2024, The Lost Story....and I kept wondering where on EARTH all of the cozy nostalgia I'd felt in the pages of Shaffer's last, The Wishing Game, had gone.

Shaffer once again dives into a 'retelling' of sorts...but this time, the book features nods to The Chronicles of Narnia. Two of our central characters did not exactly escape to a land of fancy through a wardrobe, but instead simply went from lost to found. Jeremy and Rafe's disappearance many years ago shook their community, until one day the two friends returned. The circumstances of their sojourn remain a bit of a mystery to Rafe and almost everyone else....except Jeremy, that is. Although he knows what REALLY happened during this weird and wonderful time, he isn't ready to tell Rafe OR the world...at least, not yet.

Many years later, he has used the strange experience as a launching pad for his career and has become quite well known as a missing persons' investigator. As one of the best in the country, he is in high demand...and when Emilie Wendell reaches out, she doesn't even know whether or not he will consider taking her case. Her sister Shannon is the victim in this case, and Emilie is so determined to bring her back that she's willing to go out on a limb to implore Jeremy to help her. But stranger still, Jeremy reveals that his own story and Shannon's may actually have something in common...a LOT, in common in fact. He believes Shannon is trapped in the SAME impossible realm that he navigated with Rafe so many years ago.

But to return to this weird and wonderful world will force Jeremy to dive headfirst into the cadre of secrets he has kept buried inside for so long...and revisit some painful memories that he has worked so hard to keep at bay. Secret feelings that he has been forced to keep inside now run the risk of being revealed...but can he handle the potential fallout? With Emilie and Rafe by his side, will our intrepid hero find the strength he needs to complete the quest and return Hannah to Emilie's side? Or will they all become inhabitants of this strange, wonderful, and unknown world...permanently?

I'm not even sure there is a universe where Meg Shaffer's sophomore effort could have lived up to her debut for me. When I tell you I wanted to curl up inside The Wishing Game and live there...it isn't much of an exaggeration. Her characters leapt off the page, the story was full of wit, charm, and whimsy, managed to be a balance of both gentle nods and references to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its own unique story. It still managed to live in a place of reality and straddled the line between the real world and a magical land with effortless efficacy. I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of that book, but I HAD to buy a physical copy just to have it as part of my collection: it is just THAT special.

So why exactly was reading this book such a drastically different experience for me? I think it all started with the opening (fittingly enough) where we are introduced to Emilie and her plight. I almost got the feel from the off that this was going to be more of a straightforward missing person's story, and while I was taken aback by this....I sort of liked it. I was HOPING the rest of the book was going to play in tandem with sort of a balanced duality, where we could see events in the real world unfold and have the events from the magical realm sort of play out almost alongside them, where the real world would sort of remain the focus, but the magical world would help in 'solving the mystery', as it were.

But what happened was sort of the opposite of that: Shaffer tried to have our characters live in the real world while they mostly reside IN the magical world...and for me, it just didn't work. We also find out that the center of this story is ACTUALLY a love story...so this muddles the central theming even more. After a while, it seemed more like it was Jeremy's world, and we were all just living in it...and I started to wonder WHY I as the reader should be so concerned with Emilie or finding Shannon at all. (By the way, talk about a character that doesn't truly get her due...I had to LOOK UP her name when writing this review because after a week and a half I couldn't even remember it!)

We have a storyteller along the way (essentially an unnamed narrator who is revealed at the end of the book) who pops in between chapters for the sake of levity and sometimes brevity...but I also don't think this device provided the emotional impact it could have and I could have lived without it. When it comes to this one, it's all about the Fairy Tale...but I just didn't feel the fancy. The magical land of Shanandoah (which of course drove me crazy with its spelling) made sense and fit the mold well enough, but it just wasn't MEMORABLE and magical in the way Clock Island was to me in Shaffer's last book. (And for all you fans of Wishing Game, there is a tiny Easter Egg here too...one of the few moments I genuinely smiled while reading this one!)

I'm also not sure why this one draws so many comparisons to Narnia. I can admit it's been a while since I've read the books (and even a few years since I've watched the movies) but I didn't FEEL any of the parallels as strongly as I did in her last book to the source material. Shaffer mentions in her author's note that sort of the springboard for this one was exploring the idea of whatever happened to two of the boys from Lord of the Flies years after they got off the island...and I'll be honest, THAT makes a lot more sense as a parallel than anything relating to the Lion, The Witch, or the Wardrobe. This also seemed like a project that Shaffer has been working on intermittently for some years now, and it just had that sort of disjointed, rewritten feel. I didn't feel the rise and fall of the journey, and although this book wasn't as long as your typical fantasy tale (by quite a bit) it felt like I could have WALKED to Narnia and back in the time it took me to finish it.

And in the end, I think I might have felt better if, much like a fable passed down from years of old, this PARTICULAR story had simply remained lost.

3.5 stars

Swoon! This book is a book lover's dream. It's the magic of what fairy tales are made of. And I loved every minute of it!

This book is about what happens to two boys after they've been whisked off to a magical land and presumed missing back home. And how they find themselves traveling back to the land, Shanandoah years later to help a girl find her missing sister. This book is inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Flies and if those big names don't drawn you immediately in then all the Fleetwood Mac references certainly will!

I listened to the audiobook and read along in my physical copy and it made for the perfect fairytale experience. Because everyone knows fairytales are best when told to you. And I loved that the Storyteller of this story chimes in often with her own short chapters throughout the tale!

If you're a fan of fantasy, nostalgia, mystery, and master storytelling, this book is for you!!

Adults can read fairy tales, too.

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer is a fairy tale about two boys, now grown, who experienced something together as kids that no one else can understand. Jack and Ralph were lost in the woods as kids. For six months, no one could find them. And then all of a sudden, they were back, and their lives would be forever changed.

Jack grew up to help find lost girls, and Ralph grew up a reclusive artist. Now Emilie has entered their lives, asking Jack for help to find her missing sister. Jack knows where her sister is, but he can't get there without Ralph's help. And so the three travel back to the place where Jack and Ralph spent six months of their lives - a place where all secrets are finally revealed.

I really enjoyed Shaffer's previous novel The Wishing Game. (There's even a quick nod to that novel in this one.) This one was definitely entertaining, but it felt very heavy on the dialogue with not a lot of action. It also didn't feel as well-written, although there might be a reason for that, and if I tell you, I'll be giving stuff away.

So I guess you'll just have to read this one for yourself!

The Lost Story is published by Ballantine Books and is available to purchase now. I received a free e-book for this review.

In truth, I wanted so badly to like this book. Books about secret, magical worlds were my favorite growing up and made me fall in love with reading. I was excited at the onset of this book, but steadily started to lose interest. I wish we could have read more about Rafe and Jeremy’s initial time in Shanandoah through a separate timeline. And, sadly, the time we did have in the kingdom felt sooo rushed to me! I also wish the dialogue wasn’t so focused on being witty- I thought that made the story lack depth. I am glad that it seems most people are enjoying the read, it was just was not for me!

3.7 Stars
One Liner: Heartwarming and a tad whimsical

Young boys and best friends, Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell, disappeared in the Red Crow Forest and were found six months later. One of them knows what happened, while the other wants answers he cannot be given. Fifteen years later, Jeremy is a missing persons investigator and Rafe is a recluse.
Emilie wants to find her missing sister and contacts Jeremy. He knows where she is but it would mean going back to where they were during those six special months. As the trio embarks on a new adventure, they hope to find more than answers.
The story comes in the third-person POV of Emilie and Rafe with one chapter from Jeremy and occasional snippets from the ‘storyteller’.

My Thoughts:
After loving The Wishing Game, I was excited to this book. It is supposed to have a good dose of magic realism, which is my favorite.
The book started great. I liked the characters though the men seemed they didn’t always act their age. That could be explained by their mysterious disappearance (or so I told myself). Fritz was a cute addition too!
The bits by the storyteller were cute, though not all readers will enjoy such interruptions to the plot. I liked those, though.
The pacing is a bit uneven. The blurb reveals 50% of the plot. Or, it would be more accurate to say that the event mentioned in the blurb occurs at the midpoint of the story. Quite a long wait if you ask me.
The second half of the book is a lot different given the change in the setting. I initially enjoyed the setting despite the weird phrases that popped up from time to time. It sounded like teens wanting to appear cool by using ‘adult’ language (mostly for the guys). The conversation between the girls was good.
I hoped there wouldn’t be a love triangle, so to see the romance track develop differently made me very happy. While it was sweet, the vibes were off at times (do not please use the words brother and lover together for the same person). That said, I can’t deny it was rather sweet in some scenes.
The last quarter felt like it dragged on a little. I was ready for a HEA when we got a new development. Can see why it had to happen but I wouldn’t have minded a shorter and easier resolution. The ending is hopeful (HFN types). I did wonder if there would be a sequel though I think that won’t be necessary.
The world-building is patchy but provides enough details for the readers to imagine the setting. Considering the book’s length, I’m okay with what we get. I would have loved more of it (obviously).
The author’s note is charming, cute, and funny. Don’t miss it.

To summarize, The Lost Story is a bittersweet tale about second chances, healing, found family, love, and the power of magic (writing). While it didn’t wow me, I can’t deny that it made me smile many times.
(If you loved The Wishing Game, maybe go into this with lesser expectations).
Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group (Ballantine), for eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

I am grateful to the publishers for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of this book.

I was hooked from the very first chapter! I am a sucker for a good modern fairy tale and this was no exception! I was intrigued with why one boy could remember what happened and the other couldn’t. I loved the way all the storylines came together. The best part of all was having the storyteller chapters throughout. Brilliant idea! I hope there are more stories to come!

I loved The Wishing Game by this author and have been anticipating this release all year. I really enjoyed the uniqueness of this story. It was like reading an adult fairy tale and I just felt like I was a child again listening to one of my favorite stories. The Lost Story was cozy, heartwarming and mysterious. And look at the covers of Meg’s books… so beautiful! ⁣
⁣
Read if you enjoy:⁣
💕 Romance ⁣
✨ Fairytales⁣
🦁 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine -- Ballantine Books for accepting my request to read and review The Lost Story, a novel,
by Meg Shaffer on NetGalley.

Published: 07/16/24

Stars: 3

Genre: Classification questioned

NetGalley shows The Lost Story to be a romance, Sci Fi & Fantasy and Women's Fiction book. I found the story juvenile and felt as if I was reading a middle grade book. I purposefully shy away from this genre; I don't enjoy it. With that said the synopsis drew me in, not just my usual couple lines and skim looking for both good and bad clues. I read the synopsis and thought ohh this sounds good, and it was early on. At about 35% the descent began unknowingly for me. The story went into Sci Fi and creative writing, and stayed there.

As I reflect I can see my much younger self being introduced to fantasy with this type of book. As a result, I would gift this. The question becomes to whom? Is this for kids or adults and that is for you to determine.

The boys go missing, they come home, and their lives are forever changed. The while they were gone line impressed me for a couple minutes. Kudos to Shaffer the transition I found clever.

The Lost Story reads exactly like it was written by someone who has never read a Fantasy novel before, and has no interest in doing so.

Does that make sense? Because I don’t know how else to explain it. I’ve read plenty of Fantasy that didn’t have a lot of worldbuilding, or had worldbuilding that I thought was poorly done, and I don’t think that’s the problem here. Lost Story feels…it feels shallow. Specifically in its use of fantastical elements. The fantasy part of it is paper-thin and toothless, passionless, hand-waved. All in all, I never lost the impression that this book just could not (would not?) commit; it wanted to be Literary Fiction, it wanted to be a Romance, it wanted to be a portal-fantasy, and because it couldn’t choose, it failed to be any of them successfully.

(It could have been all three. If you’re a good enough storyteller, you can choose all of the above, when someone asks you to pick a genre. I’ve seen it done! But Shaffer didn’t choose all three, she didn’t choose at all, and that’s why it was a mess.)

I think this book was supposed to coast on vibes and queer rep, but it didn’t do anything interesting with either, so???

The fantasy-land in the book (which, nothing magical happens until the 50% mark, so brace yourself for a good long wait if you do decide you want to read this) is like something you might find in a picture book; it’s not very complex, the names are silly, the villains are cartoonish both in tone and threat-level, etc. And that’s not necessarily a problem! Especially once we learn about the origin of this world (although again, you’ll be waiting a long time for that information). It’s something to be explored and thought about and discussed. The Magicians (the book, not the show so much) had adults going to not-Narnia and loving it despite/because of its…what I can only call its childishness, although that’s not really the right word, I think. It can be done. The relationship between adults and – let’s call it childish wonder is something lots of people have told stories about, across all possible mediums. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that at all.

But The Lost Story doesn’t feel like that. It’s not doing that. It’s the difference between LARPing and putting on a costume for an adult’s Halloween party; the latter is either enjoying the aesthetic of a thing or actively mocking it, generally, but either way, it’s not…engaging with it? Is that what I mean? It doesn’t care. It’s a game. A joke. Something to be wiped off like face-paint when you’re done with it, and completely forgotten, discarded, because it doesn’t matter to you.

I’m not saying that’s wrong. I am saying that if that’s your approach, you’re not going to write a great Fantasy novel.

Shaffer is playing dress-up with Fantasy, taking the aesthetic because it’s pretty and sparkly and not giving one single damn about the heart of it. Like someone dressing punk because they think it looks cool, but not even knowing about the philosophy, never mind misunderstanding or ignoring it. The result might be sparkly, but under the glitter it’s completely hollow.

Case in point: once they made it to fantasy-land, none of the adults in Lost Story minded, or even noticed, that they were basically inside a nursery rhyme. They were totally comfortable making out on a kid’s bed surrounded by fairytale-esque figures painted all over the walls. They never raised an eyebrow at the BasicTM villains, but instead took them deadly seriously. They never commented on or thought about the place names. They never cringed.

I am anti-cringe, I hate cringe-culture, but if you put three grown-ass adults into this setting, I don’t buy that NONE of them will EVER think about how weirdly childish it all is. That all of them are unquestioningly eager to stay here forever. That they all sort of…regress to being children, in a lot of ways? Just, instantly? And none of that is explored at all, none of it seems intentional. The characters just are that way because it’s convenient. They don’t think, like we’re not supposed to think, because this story is so incredibly thin that it tears the moment you brush against it.

I have considered that this might have been purposeful; that possibly Shaffer was trying to do something or say something about how abandoning our childishness is bad, that we should embrace our inner children, something along those lines. But if that was the goal, it fell unbelievably flat. It really felt like Shaffer didn’t WANT to be telling this story: at one point, there’s a fifteen-day span that’s supposed to be filled with epic celebrations – and instead of, you know, actually writing the characters living through it, we get a couple of paragraphs summarising each day before we get to the summary of the next.

NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO WRITE. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WRITE IT, DON’T PUT IT IN THERE. The summaries were just…gah! Someone wanting to show off the sparkly thing, without having to put the work in of, you know, actually writing it. What the fuck??? WHY? Don’t write it at all, if you don’t want to write it! How is that hard???

The Big Gay Love Story had no passion, no real emotion in it at all. Same with the Instantly Intense relationships everyone has with Skyla – the queen of fantasy-land – when they meet her; why do they love her so much? No clue. Lost Story touches very briefly on various Serious Topics, but doesn’t bother to explore them or use them or engage with them at all. I don’t even know what to say about the whole ‘abusive dad/gay son’ thing. Why is it all so shallow? Why is it so simple and so basic?

Skip it. RUN IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. This is such a fucking waste of time for anyone looking for a Fantasy novel – instead of whatever the hells this is.

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer is a love story and a fairytale written for adults. I found it to be quite enchanting, entertaining and a quick read. The main characters, Rafe and Jeremy were charming, funny and loving. I hope that there is a sequel to this novel!

If you like books with magic realism as part of a very good story, you will enjoy The Lost Story. And if you ever enjoyed fairytales and/or the Narnia series, I highly recommend you read The Lost Story.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author (whose debut novel The Wishing Game was excellent too) and Ballantine Books for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Group Ballantine for the eARC.

As I was reading other reviews for this, I landed on the best one... This is an absolute delightful adult fairytale. It was unique and so enjoyable.

A really sweet story for people who grew up with "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," "Bridge to Terabithia," or other books where the characters are magically able to enter a completely different world.

In this story, we have a sister who just found out that she is a sister, a searcher who can find missing people but cannot find the one thing he truly wants, and an artist who knows what he wants but doesn't understand what it means. They all end up coming together in West Virginia to enter the Red Crow woods to find Emilie's missing older sister, who has been missing for ages but Emilie just found out that she existed!

This story pulled on my heartstrings FOR SURE. I loved the magical land of Shanandoah and wished I had one myself. This book truly made me feel like I was a little kid again and I wanted to go out into the woods and explore. Beyond just the fun fantastical elements of the book it also talks about loss and grief and moving on. There are definitely some heavier topics, which all books of this nature have and are able to deal with quite well.

Will there be more? I doubt it. But I would definitely read that book quite quickly if there was another.

The Lost Story follows Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell after they went missing during an end of school field trip to the Red Crow State Forest and “magically” show up six months later. The story flashes forward to fifteen years later when Rafe is now a reclusive artist while Jeremy became a missing persons investigator. When vet tech, Emilie Wendell’s sister goes missing, they must revisit the forest from many years ago. Along with having an interesting premise, I was excited to read this story as it was based in West Virginia. As someone who tries to read novels set in every state, I am very excited to finally include this one. The novel attempts to do a lot in very few pages as the world-building and character development was ambitious for only 330 pages.

The first portion of the novel sets up the real world with all the characters. This portion was a lot slower, but the pace was expected as it set the tone for how the two worlds are different. Since this is a portal fantasy, the reader already knows there is another world to be discovered. The other world, Shenandoah, was captivating as the reader never knew what to expect. The novel reads like a series, yet everything is packed other in a single book, which means that some details are not explored in as much detail as I expected. While I knew this would be an adult fantasy novel, the writing and dialogue read a little younger. I think this story would have been read a little better with younger characters. As for the romance, I think it needed a little more time to develop. The reader is given these short bursts of time that the characters spend together and concludes that it is a great romance. I think if the author wanted the audience to connect with the romance a little more, then more pages needed to be dedicated to its development. Overall, this novel has a great concept, but it tries to do too much in a very short time.

**I give a special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Ballantine Books, for the opportunity to read this entertaining novel. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**

Hands-down, a five star read for me! Shaffer has quickly become an 'auto-buy' author for me. This book was an absolute delight of a read. This book was truly a fairy-tale retelling for adults, and I fell hard for it.

The Good: Everything? Too broad? Honestly, though. I loved the MC. I loved the secondary characters. The imagery was top notch. World building was stellar. The character development was fully thought out.

The Bad: That I can not read it again for he first time.

Oh! Y’all! This book is soooo good! I almost skipped it. I am not a big fan of Narnia-GASP! But, this book captured me in a unique world and I do not want to forget it!

This story follows Jeremy and Rafe. As young boys, they were lost in a West Virginia forest for 6 months. But, were they really lost?

Now, it is 15 years later. Jeremy is an expert in finding lost people. He has been contacted by Emilie. Her sister has been missing for years. Jeremy knows where she is and now he needs Rafe to help him return to the enchanted world they discovered in their youth.

This tale is full of wonderful characters, magic, mystery, abuse, love, terror, friendship and just plain creativity. It also had me laughing out loud in places.

Need a magical read that is present in both worlds…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

I really don't like writing negative reviews so I'm going to keep this one short.

I read the first chapter of The Lost Story as part of a First Chapter Vs. Final Rating project and I gave this one a 10/10, not only that, I put it at the very top of my list--so I was fully prepared to LOVE this book. But in the end, The Lost Story was a huge letdown: the synopsis does this book a disservice by trying to lure the wrong audience (think twice if you're here mostly for the mystery), and the writing is shallow with lots of TELLING instead of showing and it ultimately seems to be geared for a much younger audience than intended (think young YA).

The only redeeming part of this book is the queer love story that is weaved throughout. I was invested.. but realizing this "epic romance" happened over half a year when the two were 14 years old definitely took away from the effect.. 🤨

Who is this book for? Hmm.. This is maybe for people that:
- want to read literally everything that was inspired by Narnia, OR
- more than anything want passionate (not spicy) romance in their books, OR
- want to listen to an audiobook with a story that's interesting enough that they don't really have to give their full attention to.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing me an e-ARC of this book.