Marti’s story captivated me from the first page, and I couldn’t get enough of this engrossing, layered family drama. Highly recommend adding this to your TBR!

A beautiful story filled with conflicted feelings and try to come to terms with a traumatic past. It's wonderfully written and deals with such a heavy subject. Marti did such a great job in righting the wrongs from the past and finally seeking justice. We learn many small details throughout the story that at some point make so much sense. This book will definitely make you cry but I can't recommend it enough it's just so well written.

***Russian doll of secret traumas***

This is not a pleasant tale. This is also not just a black-and-white story of trauma and abuse. This is Marti's story, told in alternating time lines. 1971 when she is thirteen, 2000 when she is 43, with a short look back to 1964. Slowly, layer upon layer of traumatic events is revealed, drawing a picture of disfiguring injury and child-abuse. How does a youth like this impact the young woman and her ability to build a happy life later?

The narrator shows us in slowly developing images how hard it is for Marti to grasp what happens. At thirteen, she can appear much more mature and at the same time totally lost. She takes to art to express her unprocessed experiences, the lies she tells herself and those around her. First intricate, sprawling dollhouses (which she calls dioramas), later painting and mosaics. There is a lot of re-enacting (and escaping) reality with dolls and dollhouses--reminding of the complex meaning of the dollhouse in "The miseducation of Cameron Post". How lonely Marti is.

This is also a story of the recent past. Before Roe, before the Equal Protection Clause. It is a sad tale. But most people in it are good, there is hope, and it is told in beautiful pictures. It feels absolutely authentic.

A slow read that keeps rewarding the careful reader.

What Was Lost from Melissa Connelly is a painful story about a woman's need for closure. After learning from her sister that a beloved neighbor was still living in their hometown, Marti makes an excuse to her job to take the summer off. She drags her teenage daughter with her to a cabin in Vermont despite her daughter wanting to spend the time in Brooklyn.

When Marti arrives to visit with the neighbor, the door is answered by a small boy who informs her that his granny has died. The boy runs to his father, who is Peter, Marti's old friend.

What transpires is Marti's story with her hometown and why she has stayed away. As a young girl, her father died, leaving her alone with her mother and sister who had already formed their bond. She had a traumatic accident that left her scarred which also didn't help her loneliness.

When in high school, Marti's art teacher takes a special interest in her and this is even more trauma to Marti and her life. This also leads to the break that she had with Peter and his mother, who had provided so much love and grace to her childhood.
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This was a hard one to read. The subject matter isn't easy but I do feel that Connelly handled it with aplomb. Each 'time section' was fully developed and added the nuance needed for the delicate subject matters.

This isn't a book that is going to be easy to read. However, Connelly is an excellent writer and makes this much easier and real with each word.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I think this could've been a great story about trauma and seeking forgiveness. I'm someone who has dealt with childhood trauma, and the book does a great job at highlighting how trauma/memories can rear it's head.

The beginning of this book, the sentences and the sense of time felt really choppy and hard to follow. I also didn't understand why Marti was trying to seek forgiveness or how much that meant to her - so it was hard to feel invested for the first 20%.

An editors eye could've really helped flesh this story out.

Also a sensitivity reader and trigger/content warnings to help protect the reader as well. I knew there was going to be trauma in this book but I wasn't prepared for what kind of trauma and how graphic it would be.