Meg Shaffer - The Lost Story

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.

Comment:  This is Meg Shaffer's second book. Having enjoyed the first one through a buddy read with a friend, we have decided to try this one as well and it was as sweet and as magical, although, for me, a little less balanced.

In this story we find two friends who were lost in a forest for six months, in West Virginia. When they are finally rescued, there is a definite change to their appearance and one not matching people who were lost for so long. Besides, one of them, Jeremy, seems to be hiding something and the other, Ralph, claims he doesn't remember anything of all that time.

Several years later, Jeremy is now a man who dedicated his life to search for missing girls and one day he meets Emilie, who wants him to help search for her sister Shannon, who went missing twenty years ago. At first Jeremy is reluctant but then decides to help her and, for that, they need Ralph's help. What will happen next will be very hard to describe...

As I've said, I did like this story. I particularly enjoyed the low key vibe which suggested something was going to happen, some kind of secret would be revealed, and the tension until we finally get some answers was good. I also liked that while this was happening, there were some characterization clues that drew me in to the dynamics between the characters and I was quite invested in knowing what would happen next.

Although graphically the text doesn't have a separation on the page, I'd say there are two main parts in this book: before the main characters go on an adventure to search for Emilie's sister, and after they enter the woods where she went missing. To me these two sections are distinctive and not only because they take place in different geographical locations. Since the story is a fantasy/magical realism mix, some "bizarre" notions are to be expected, but I was still a little surprised by the difference in atmosphere and narrative.

Jeremy and Ralph - well, Rafe, as he prefers to be called - were lost in the woods and then suddenly were rescued. Suddenly because nothing really happened to find them... one day they were still missing and the teams stopped looking, and the next they simply showed up while witnesses saw them. Of course something is different about them and why is what is the real mystery. I think the author does a good job in presenting and slowly setting up things for the big reveal which we know, as things go by, will happen after they go back to those woods.

To me, this first section, let's call it that, was truly special. I think the tone of mystery wrapped up with some magic hints, something special under the currents was so greatly paired up with the characters themselves that I was eagerly turning the pages to see what would happen next or what the characters would do. The tension and the idea of something were enough to make me want to see if some of my wishes would come true about this story.

Since I did read the other novel this author wrote, of course I knew magic would happen for certain, and when we finally learn some key information, Jeremy and Rafe along with Emilie decide to investigate the woods, where the magic will be. This is no horror story, don't worry, and magical stuff starts coming out of everywhere. This is no surprise, it's the whole point after all, but I will share why I was very disappointed with some details in this section: whereas the other part had been juicily antsy, this new part, due to the content, nevertheless, was way too juvenile for me! It seemed as if a new story was taking place and those characters had reversed to be teenagers... so disappointing!

I get it that the reveal and the fantasy aspects could not keep up the narrative as it had been, but... still. I wish the author had done things differently because while I was happy enough with the path taken, the characters sounded immature and were doing things in ways we would only see in juvenile stories that hide moral lessons or such. I've also read the author's note at the end where she tells how this story came to be and what inspired her years ago... well, I can see the youthful base of her work, but I was still sad this was it. The fantasy section wasn't as special as I wanted nor as well explained either.

I should say there are some hints of romance, which were very well suggested but not as amazingly accomplished as they could, there are choices the characters need to make which sometimes felt weren't in par with their characterization and some fantasy elements felt a little too staged, even for what was already fantastic anyway. And, again, some things were just too vague, even if one accepts the rules of magic would not follow any others in this specific world.

In the end, as expected, all ends as well as the characters want, and Jeremy, Rafe and Emilie face the fears they have to so they can triumph. I liked the novel and the end, but I think the author could have done some things better.

Grade: 7/10