Book Review: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Lost Story
Author: Meg Shaffer
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: July 16, 2024
Print length: 352 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

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.

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.

Let’s cut right to the chase: The Lost Story is a break-out 5-star read for me!

I went into this reading adventure without expectations. I hadn’t read the author’s previous novel, and didn’t know a whole lot about The Lost Story, other than blurbs about this being a Narnia for grown-ups.

And yes, that’s kind of true… and it’s also its own wonderful experience entirely.

In The Lost Story, the central mystery focuses on two lost-then-found boys. As teens, Rafe and Jeremy disappeared on a school outing to Red Crow State Forest in West Virginia, only to reappear — suddenly, and without explanation — six months later. For Rafe, the missing months are simply gone from his memory. Jeremy sticks to an undetailed story: they were lost, managed to survive, and then were rescued.

Fifteen or so years later, the boys are men in their mid-thirties. Jeremy has achieved fame as a missing person finder, carrying out seemingly impossible rescues in hopeless situations. Rafe, on the other hand, lives alone in a cabin in the woods, preferring to cut himself off from the world. Jeremy and Rafe have had no contact since their return, despite formerly being best of friends.

They’re brought back into one another’s lives when Emilie contacts Jeremy, asking for help in locating her long-lost sister Shannon — a person Emilie only recently learned even existed. Shannon was lost in the same woods as Jeremy and Rafe, but years earlier, and was long ago presumed dead. But Emilie feels a desperate need to know more. and Jeremy agrees to help her — only if Rafe joins in as well.

As the trio journeys from Red Crow into a magical realm beyond their own, their story hits traditional quest beats while also offering an original take on the magical portal genre. One fascinating element is the fact that the characters are adults. We’ve learned from Narnia and other fantasy classics that children are best suited to these portal journeys — a sense of innocence is essential to crossing over and being being open to the reality of alternate worlds. Seeing adult characters embrace the magic, even while acknowledging the unlikelihood of it all, adds a unique flavor to the tale.

Where to even begin to explain just how wonderful this book is? I don’t want to reveal much up front, but as the synopsis makes clear, there are other worlds involved, and the answers to the mysteries of these disappearances involve magic and otherworldly forces.

When you begin to question your sanity, remind yourself that the fact that something impossible happened doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

There’s joy and sorrow, love and friendship, adventure and danger — all this and more awaits Jeremy, Rafe, and Emilie as they set out on their quest. The quest itself is filled with wonder and beauty, but even more special is the relationships discovered and revealed as the characters move fully into a world beyond their own.

Reading The Lost Story is a beautiful, funny, emotional, transporting experience. I never expected to fall for this book the way I did. I just wish I could live in Jeremy, Rafe, and Emilie’s world a bit longer. Highly recommended.

Now that I’ve read The Lost Story, I’m eager to read the author’s debut novel, The Wishing Game… just as soon as I can fit it into my reading schedule.

Fun side note: After finishing The Lost Story, I read the author bio and discovered that Meg Shaffer is married to author Andrew Shaffer, who has written some supremely silly parodies and novels (including the Obama/Biden mystery books). I can only imagine how entertaining their dinner table conversations must be!

12Sep2023

Book Review: Dreambound by Dan Frey

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Dreambound
Author: Dan Frey
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication date: September 12, 2023
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction / fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

In this thrilling contemporary fantasy novel, a father must uncover the secret magical underbelly of Los Angeles to find his daughter, who has seemingly disappeared into the fictional universe of her favorite fantasy series.

When Byron Kidd’s twelve-year-old daughter vanishes, the only clue left behind is a note claiming she’s taken off to explore the Hidden World, a magical land from a series of popular novels. She is not the only child to seek out this imaginary realm in recent years, and Byron—a cynical and hard-nosed reporter—is determined to discover the whereabouts of dozens of missing kids.

Byron secures a high-profile interview with Annabelle Tobin, the eccentric author of the books, and heads off to her palatial home in the Hollywood Hills. But the truth Byron discovers is more fantastical than he ever could have dreamed.

As he uncovers locations from the books that seem to be bleeding into the real world, he must shed his doubts and dive headfirst into the mystical secrets of Los Angeles if he ever hopes to reunite with his child. Soon Byron finds himself on his own epic journey—but if he’s not careful, he could be the next one to disappear…

Told through journal entries, transcripts, emails, and excerpts from Tobin’s novels, Dreambound is a spellbinding homage to Los Angeles and an immersive and fast-paced story of how far a father will go—even delving into impossible worlds—to save his daughter.

Dan Frey’s previous novel The Future Is Yours was a fantastic read, so I jumped at the chance to read his newest, Dreambound. I’m happy to report that Dreambound absolutely lives up to my high expectations!

In this new book, told through the main character’s investigation notebook and email exchanges, Byron Kidd’s world falls apart when his 12-year-old daughter Liza disappears. A note left tucked inside one of her favorite books, a volume in the massively popular Fairy Tale fantasy series, indicates that she’s left voluntarily. With no leads, no sightings, and nothing to go one, the case quickly goes cold, and Liza’s parents are left to cope in their own ways — her mother escapes into rituals of mourning and therapy, and Byron, an investigative journalist, decides to pursue the one lead they do have: the Fairy Tale fandom and its secrets.

Internet rumors draw connections between other missing children cases, all of which seem to be tied to Fairy Tale in some way. Yet when Byron tries to pursue this angle, he’s told that he’s chasing conspiracy theories, and warned not to let his grief and despair tarnish his professional reputation.

But Byron is convinced that he’s onto something, and heads to Los Angeles, where a single ping from Liza’s cell phone was detected after her disappearance. Through manipulation and subterfuge, he manages to get an interview with the author of Fairy Tale, Annabelle Tobin, whose sixth and final book in the series has been long delayed and who lives a reclusive life in her secluded Hollywood Hills mansion.

Things get weirder and weirder — is there truly a “hidden world” that these missing children have managed to get to? Or is the fandom so overly immersed in the fictional Fairy Tale world that predators and traffickers have been able to lure young readers with false promises?

Early on, Dreambound establishes the power of reading and the lure of imagination and fantasy. Byron, wrapped up in his obsessive need to find Liza, contemplates whether he made a fundamental mistake as a parent:

Then I’ll tell you who I am. I’m the guy who can’t sleep, wondering what I did wrong. Wondering how I could have possibly prevented this. Wondering if I made a mistake by teaching her to read, or giving her those stupid, dangerous books.

As all readers know, books have power. For a little while, at least, books transport us to new worlds and new ways of thinking. But Dreambound suggests that there’s more: What if the shared belief of enough readers is enough to make these fantasy worlds manifest within our own? What if what happened to the missing children isn’t shared delusion, but the literal opening of a portal to the hidden world, accessed through the power of believing it to be real?

I mean, what is magic if not a way to transform the world through the power of our thoughts? What are books if not spells? What are stories if not the most powerful and mysterious force known to man?

Dreambound is complicated and mind-bendy, taking us deep into Byron’s investigation through his notes, embedded transcripts of conversations and interviews, and the stories Byron encounters through a mysterious book called (naturally) The Hidden World. To others, Byron may seem to have been driven mad by his loss — but as he digs deeper, the clues he discovers lead him to startling discoveries and unexpected allies, and impel him onward even while outside forces want to stop him.

Annabelle Tobin seems an obvious stand-in for a certain real-world author of a blockbuster, bestselling series of children’s books and movies which have so indelibly changed our pop culture reference points. Not to get too meta, but it’s hard not to draw parallels when reading lines such as this in an email from her editor:

Right now, your work is being tarnished and overshadowed by a public conversation that we’ve lost control over.

Still, Annabelle differs in key ways, ends up being more sympathetic than I’d originally believed, and has unique secrets that we can only assume are not shared with her real-world counterpart.

I loved the adventure, the unraveling of clues, and the emphasis on the role of books and fantasy in our lives, as well as the underlying mythos in which beliefs shared across enough people gain power to stand on their own. Byron is not always a likable person (some of his tactics are fairly despicable), but he can be forgiven his crueler moments for the sake of his devotion to getting his daughter to safety, no matter what he has to sacrifice.

At points, I wished that the glimpses of the world of the Fairy Tale series went more in-depth. I do love a good story-within-a-story plot device, and in this case, the bits we do see of the Fairy Tale fantasy world seem very alluring — it’s easy to see, based on these snippets, how they might generate such a devoted fan base.

Still, the point is not the Fairy Tale series itself, but its effect on its readers — particularly those still young or open enough to both understand the real world in which they live yet still hold out hope that fictional ideals might somehow be true.

The concepts here are wonderful, the plot is convoluted and twisty, and the fantasy elements are immersive and imaginative. Dreambound is a compelling, entertaining read that kept me turning the pages until way past my bedtime. Don’t miss it!