As high school boys, best friends Jeremy and Rafe vanish in a West Virginia state park and are missing for six months, until they mysteriously reappear with no explanation of how they survived.

15 years later Jeremy is a famous missing persons investigator with an uncanny ability to find lost girls and Rafe is a reclusive artist, bearing scars from their time away but no memories of it. Jeremy remembers though and has kept it from Rafe to keep him safe.

When Emilie comes to Jeremy to to try and find her long lost sister, it kicks off a journey to a hidden magical realm where Rafe and Jeremy first disappeared.

"For you can always walk away from magic, but if you turn your back on it, it may never offer you another chance."

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The Lost Story has influence from The Chronicles of Narnia, but with pieces that reminded me of Fairy Tale from Stephen King and a magic all it's own. I'm not surprised as I also enjoyed The Wishing Game from Meg Shaffer (there's a small nod to the Clock Island series in this story). Grown ups can have fairy tales too.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for an egalley on NetGalley.

One of my favorite book series I’ve read is Lev Grossman’s Magician series. While reading this, the same energy, whimsy, and heart poured from the pages. What happens when two high school boys are lost in a forest and mysteriously appeared again much later unharmed? When they reunite again to help find a girl’s half sister, the magic they tap into starts an adventure full of heart, and is so addicting.

Meg Shaffer has a way of creating magical worlds that are a fabulous combination of reality and a little magic, starting with The Wishing Game and continuing that magic through The Lost Story. Described last he "Narnia for adults", it truly was a little escape from reality that had a bit of humor, love, and loss mixed in.

I found myself interested in the story right from the beginning. A bit of mystery combined with the hope for adventure, I really found myself wanting to read more. The characters were lovable as well - each had their own past, quirks, and skills they brought to the team. While a lot of the adventure was fun to read, there was also depth to the story that added an emotional component mixed in with the humor and adventure. I really like the world building as a concept, the descriptions of each small place within the world were very good and I could picture myself in them. I found it hard to visualize the world as a whole so the travel within it got a bit confusing, but that does not detract from the story in any way.

Overall I enjoyed the story, characters, and the escape, and I hope to read more from this author in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House - Ballantine for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Absolutely in love with Meg Shaffer’s writing. I grew up watching Narnia as a kid, and what drew me to this book was the comparison to Narnia. I loved the world. I love the mystery behind it. I loved Rafe and Jeremy’s relationship and how they were able to grow together and work through their past trauma together. Would highly recommend this book

I enjoyed this fantasy story. I felt transported. The characters, love story and reminiscing about Narnia hooked me. I look forward to the authors next story.

3.5 stars, rounded up!

I was so excited to hear that Meg Shaffer was writing another story, The Wishing Game was one of my favorite books last year! The premise of The Lost Story was intriguing to me, I love the fairy tale feel and the nods to Narnia.

Jeremy and Rafe went missing 15 years ago and come home drastically changed. Jeremy is able to find lost people and things and Rafe is secluded in the woods. When Emilie approached Jeremy about finding her lost sister, he was hesitant at first when he finds out it's in the same woods he was lost in. What follows is a story about love, loss, and family dynamics.

The story got off to a little bit of a slow start for me, laying the groundwork for what was to come but it was engaging enough to keep me reading. Once they started to get into the details of what happened when Jeremy and Rafe went missing and we learned more about their past, I was more and more intrigued. I loved the idea of a lost world and the fantastical piece of the story but it did feel a little corny at times. I feel like some details could have been written differently to make it a really penomenal story!

Once they finally did get into the fairy tale kingdom, things went so quickly and the story lines felt super rushed. I wish they could have spent more time there instead of building the story in the real world. It was also pretty easy to predict what was coming and even though that is annoying to me at times, it made for a cozy and gentle story instead of fast paced and nerve wracking.

So if you're in the mood for a cozy read, make sure to pick up The Lost Story! Thank you Netgalley and Meg Shaffer for my very first ARC!!

The Lost Story is about Jeremy and Rafe, two men who went missing in the Red Crow Forrest for 6 months when they were 15 years old. Only Jeremy can remember anything from the time they went missing but refuses to tell Rafe any details about their experience in the woods. Jeremy now spends his time finding lost women and girls while Rafe leads a much quieter life painting in a cabin in the woods. When a young adopted woman named Emilie asks Jeremy to find her missing sister, Jeremy and Rafe reunite to venture back into the woods and reclaim their past.

I absolutely loved this charming book and all the characters it contained. The queer love story was a particular highlight for me. Meg Shaffer is a great writer and fans of The Wishing Game are sure to enjoy this tale as well. Her writing brings the world to life and kept me entertained from the first to the last page.

Highly recommend for anyone looking for a lovely magical story about friendship, family, love, and adventure!

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group, and Ballantine Books for access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Received the ARC from Netgalley. (It was offered to me, I did not request it- but I'm happy I agreed.)

This book was honestly really cute. It was kind of a soft story, nothing huge and epic, but it had a lot feelings mixed in. It was both fantastical and realistic at the same time.

Oddly I though the 'storyteller' was fun. I don't love when narrators pop in and out of books usually, but in this case they had some really good lines that made me laugh and I'm not mad about them interrupting.

I didn't love Emilie's POVs. I did like her, just not her POVs. She felt oddly unnecessary despite being important somehow.

I would 100% recommend this book if you're looking for something a bit lighter. (Though, it does have a few dark themes- abusive father, specifically.)

Like many others, I came to this book because I absolutely loved The Wishing Game. Now with her second novel Meg Shaffer has definitely proven herself to be a great story writer. Much like the Wishing Game, The Lost Story really takes hold of your heart. It is always a breath of fresh air to read a book that doesn’t rely heavily on excessive violence and shock factor to try keep the reader’s attention.

I could have done without the Storyteller Corner. I don’t think the book would have been lacking at all without it.

I would recommend The Lost Story to any former kid who wished they could have stepped out of this harsh world and into their favorite fantasy realm. I hope that maybe one day Meg Shaffer will find a way to take us back to Shanandoah.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! It was a pleasure to read and review!

This book was everything I hoped for and more. It has the same heart and more magic than The Wishing Game with all the whimsy and hope you could want. Truly combining a fairy tale with West Virginia, I wish I could go back and read this again for the first time.

The concept for this novel was one that I really enjoyed, and the prologue took my breath away. I absolutely could not wait to dive further into the magical world that Shaffer was creating. However, unfortunately the rest of the novel did not live up to my hopes. For how beautiful and impressive the writing, world building, and character building all were in the prologue, throughout the rest of the novel all three were kind of hit or miss. There were moment of good writing, moments of bad— moments of excellent world building, and moments that made me have to reread a page multiple times to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding something, and ditto for characterization. As I said, I really liked the concept for this novel, but the execution for me was a bit lacking. I think it was just too much to pack into a sub-400 page book. It wasn’t a bad book by any stretch, I just think it tried to do too much at once and because of that didn’t get to do anything to the full extent that it could have.

After loving “The Wishing Game” last year, I was so excited to read Shaffer’s next book! Unfortunately, I thought this was just okay. I knew this was a loose Narnia retelling going in, and ultimately I think I might’ve liked this more if I had been more of a Narnia fan growing up. The novel itself is very sweet, but it felt very juvenile to me. The dialogue and interactions between the characters seemed best suited for pre-teens, not characters who are supposed to be in their late 20s/early 30s. I also struggled a bit with pacing; I felt it took too long for the trio to return to the enchanted kingdom, and then once we were there the story raced through world building and plot at breakneck speed. That being said, I did enjoy some of the themes explored, especially the often complicated relationship between parents and children. Overall this book was filled with whimsy and nostalgia, it just didn’t hit the mark for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review!

"The Lost Story" was a fun and creative book. I enjoyed the origin story for the land of Shanandoah. The story of Jeremy and Ralph (Rafe) was interesting and enjoyable. Fifteen years ago, they disappeared in Red Crow State Forest, only to reappear six months later, with no explanation for their absence. Rafe was confused when found, and he had some nasty looking scars on his back, but both boys looked muscular and well-fed, which made no sense. If they had been living in the woods, they should have been malnourished and weak; and if they had been kidnapped and escaped or been released, their physical condition should have deteriorated as well. Rafe has no recollection of what happened during those six months; Jeremy seems to remember something about their time in Shanandoah but is not willing or able to share it with anyone, including Rafe. This will lead to Jeremy and Rafe becoming estranged, although through their mothers, they will still have some knowledge of each other's lives. Rafe has largely become a recluse, secluding himself in his dad's cabin in the woods of West Virginia and focusing on his art -- sculptures and paintings. Jeremy has made a career out of finding lost girls and women (but only girls/women), having an uncanny knack for being able to find people who are lost but want to be found. What will bring Jeremy and Rafe back together is a woman (Emilie) looking for her lost sister. When Jeremy sees the picture of the missing sister, he realizes he knows her, and the secrets he has been holding onto for fifteen years are ready to be revealed. For you see, Jeremy and Rafe are very familiar with Shanandoah and Queen Skya, but the circumstances that led to their return to the real world required that one person would remember Shanandoah and the events that occurred there but not remember how to return, while the other person would have no recollection of Shanandoah but would know how to return (though this knowledge was useless by itself, as there would be no reason to try to return to a place one could not remember).

The existence of Shanandoah came about from the love of fairytales and fantasy, but also as a way to escape the evil and unpleasantness of the world; however, evil and unpleasantness could not be kept from Shanandoah either. Jeremy and Rafe's initial unexpected journey to Shanandoah was also brought about by a desire to escape a bad situation. Rafe's father was abusive, physically and mentally, and did not approve of Rafe spending so much drawing and spending so much time with his best friend, Jeremy. What Rafe had never been able to admit to Jeremy was that he was in love with him. However, seeing the drawings of Jeremy by Rafe, his father figured out how Rafe felt about Jeremy, and that was something he could not tolerate. He justified his actions by telling himself that he was just protecting his son from future harm by others (and identifying as gay in West Virginia would certainly have posed some risks), but in reality, he posed the biggest threat to Rafe. Jeremy felt the same way as Rafe, although he also had been afraid to admit it, not knowing that his feelings would be reciprocated. In Shanandoah they were able to share and act on those feelings, which made leaving that much harder, as Jeremy still had all the memories, but could not share them with Rafe or act upon them in the real world.

The return to Shanandoah will bring lots of positives, most significantly, enabling Jeremy to share with Rafe what he has been keeping secret for fifteen years. However, it will also bring danger and potential heartache and loss, as there is a serious threat facing Shanandoah, and it is directly related to Rafe.

Right now I am still thinking of the rating.

There are so many good parts of the book, I am by no means a professional, however I have read mt far share of books.
The Lost story follows Emilie who is on a quest to find a sister she *never* met. This is when Jeremy and Rafe come in.

I overall LOVED the premise of this book, a bit of mystery with fantasy/magical realism. The format of the book I additionally enjoyed. I will not not diverge a ton of information at this time, however there are bits of romance, mystery, fantasy elements, and NOSTALGIA.

Towards the mid-end of the book you start getting information regarding how this all came to be, I LOVED this concept of dreaming of a place you would rather be. Something that was completely made by you. I love the long lost romance between two of the characters. If you like found family this will also be a good choice!

At times I did find the book hard to follow with the pacing, times there wasn't much happening, and other times there was almost too much. However, this overall is a solid book!!!!! There are a ton of different elements that appeal to everyone, will tug on peoples heartstrings. Meg Shaffer is a great author and continues to write excellent stories!!

Another enchanting book from Meg Shaffer! Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to preview The Lost Story. I requested this book based on my love for her first book, The Wishing Game. I'm happy to report that The Lost Story lived up to my high expectations.

The premise doesn't sound unique at first; two boys go missing in the woods and struggle in their adult lives after their ordeal. What makes this story so different is that Jeremy and Rafe weren't lost, they were having adventures in the magical land of Shanandoah. Fans of fairy tales and fantasy will find lots to love here.

Like The Wishing Game, his was an easy read and had me engaged immediately. The characters had issues that felt real and reacted to them (usually) like real people would. This is a great second offering from Meg Shaffer, and I can't wait to see what she does next.

“All books are magic. An object that can take you to another world without even leaving your room? A story written by a stranger and yet it seems like they wrote it just for you or to you?….Yes, books are magic. Maybe even the strongest magic there is”.

This right here sums up this book perfectly. It’s pure magic the way it transports the reader to another world, making them forget everything for a while. The book is about two boys lost and then eventually found with no explanation of where they were or how they survived. When the boys grow up they aren’t talking anymore and each living their own lives. Jeremy finds missing girls and women so when Emilee asks him to find her missing sister he takes the job but only if Rafe joins them. What happens next is the stuff out of the best fairytales and most enjoyable books.

This is my second book by this author and I loved everything about it. I can’t wait to read her next one and thank you to Netgalley and to the publishers for allowing me to read this advanced copy.

The Lost Story is like taking a trip down memory lane to my childhood. Meg Shaffer's books have both easily become some of my favorite. This has The Chronicles of Narnia vibes, but for adults. I was immediately drawn into the story and loved escaping to the magical world of Shanandoah. I fell in love with the characters and the world-building. Do not miss out on this one! Even if you're not a big fan of fantasy, give this a go and you won't be disappointed!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Publishing for sending me an ARC of this book! This beautiful fairy tale centers around two teenage boys from West Virginia who go missing for 6 months. After their return, things don’t seem quite right with the state of the boys, and 15 years goes by without any real answers.

This is a fairy tale for grown-ups that never wanted to grow up and an opportunity to relive the magic of childhood. The story is clever, well-paced and extremely creative. I adored the characters and the incredible bonds they shared. The relationships were so strong and supportive that these characters have really stayed with me long after finishing the book.

If you are looking for a story about unconditional love, something wholesome and beautiful that will sweep you away, please don’t miss this one!

"The Lost Story" by Meg Shaffer begins with an enchanting promise that draws readers in through its captivating cover, adorned with vibrant elements that foreshadow the magical journey ahead. The tale commences with a gripping first chapter, introducing two friends who mysteriously vanish in the woods of West Virginia, only to reappear unscathed six months later.

The narrative then fast-forwards 15 years, portraying the divergent paths taken by the once-inseparable friends, Rafe and Jeremy. Rafe, now a reclusive artist living in the woods, and Jeremy, a finder of lost people. The storyline gains momentum when Emilie seeks Jeremy's help in locating her missing sister, leading the trio to revisit the forest where their enigmatic journey started.

However, the plot takes an unexpected turn as the narrative transitions into a magical, fairy-tale realm. While the story introduces elements of wonder, it falls short of creating a truly imaginative and unique world such as the one created in Harry Potter or Alice in Wonderland. Instead, it incorporates conventional elements from classic children's literature, resulting in a somewhat cliché magical setting with rainbow-colored animals, unicorns, and talking pets. One notable drawback is the lack of depth in the antagonist department. The adversaries lack robust motives or intense confrontations, making the conflict feel somewhat tepid. The Bright Boys and the King, while present, do not possess the menacing presence needed to elevate the stakes.

A narrative device that somewhat disrupts the flow is the Storyteller's Corner. This commentary section, though intending to provide additional insights, occasionally comes off as unnecessary and redundant. Integrating these opinions and events directly into the respective chapters could have maintained a smoother narrative flow.

Despite these critiques, Shaffer succeeds in addressing an underrepresented demographic within literature – the queer community. The story incorporates a same-sex coming-of-age love story, providing much-needed representation for young readers exploring their identities. It is evident that "The Lost Story" caters to a young audience, particularly those within the LGBTQ+ community, offering a heartwarming and inclusive narrative.

Overall "The Lost Story" presents a compelling premise that may resonate strongly with its intended audience – young teens and the young adult queer community. While the magical elements fall somewhat flat, the overall message of love, friendship, and self-discovery prevails, making it a valuable addition to literature that champions diversity and acceptance.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Woah. I first read The Wishing Game back in 2023 and I fell in love with the authors words and storytelling, thus I was extremely excited to read any upcoming project in the future and it did not disappoint. The lost story is a tale about magic and a really cozy fantasy universe that reminded me of Narnia. If you read and enjoyed the first book you will definitely love this one.