The Lost Story

I’ve complicated feelings on this one. I did enjoy the book, but its inherent structure was disappointing. This is a story in which a bunch of extraordinary adventures happen before the start of the book, and many more adventures happen later in the book – but they are too many to tell. Instead this book assumes that you’ve read lots of adventure books in fantasy lands and you can fill in the adventure part yourself. This book is not about THOSE adventures, this book is about the journey of becoming yourself. 

The characters are well developed and the storytelling does not slip into gay stereotypes – which is much appreciated. The first half of the book is hard to put down. The second half… well… it doesn’t really deliver on the fantasyland promise. It gives just enough to sketch out the general fantasy concept, but then veers into the real-life problems hinted at in the first half of the book. Which is fine. There is great substance there that is meaningfully (even if somewhat predictably) handled. Which would suggest I didn’t like it, but the reality is that I did like the book aside from the disappointment at the lack of imagination.

It is worth reading. I would just say keep your expectations in check.

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

“This is the book you’ve been waiting for.”—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Trilogy

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.

The Purple Fantastic Steam Rating gives this a 2 out of 5. There is no sex described in the book. It does acknowledge that sexuality exists and characters are intimate off the page, but it is extremely discreet.  You can read more about the Steam Ratings on the About Page.