The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

 

Meg Shaffer has an ability to create magic and adventure with characters who are fully drawn and charming. She won me over with The Wishing Game and kept the promise of her talent and skill in The Lost Story. Told as a fairy tale, including the insertion of explanatory chapters by The Storyteller, Shaffer tells the story of two boys who are lost as teenagers in the West Virginia wilderness. Jeremy and Rafe are sensitive and talented and when they suddenly return home after being missing for six months, things have changed in their lives. Then Emilie comes along, seeking Jeremy’s special gift of finding lost girls, as she’s just discovered that she had a sister who was lost in the same wilderness where the boys were lost. She wants to find her sister’s remains.

The story unfolds from there, with travel back to the woods and the creation of a glorious, fantastic world. But is it fantasy?

The book reads at times like a middle grade novel, but it is immensely readable. It is hard to put down. As with all good fairy tales, there are moral issues to deal with, and the treatment of that subject matter is not juvenile. I appreciate the way this author breaks down complex issues to our level and that is both hopeful and infinite.

The Lost Story was released July 16, 2024. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for this delightful ARC.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

 

It’s been exactly two years since we visited Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William, isolating on the coast of Maine from the pandemic. Tell Me Everything is the story of Bob Burgess, who met in The Burgess Boys. Bob has retired from full time law practice to Crosby, Maine. He takes an occasional criminal case, pro bono, and through the representation, we become familiar with Bob’s keen mind, big heart and sentimentalism. While this is going on, Bob and Lucy Barton, the novelist living down the peninsula, and they go for soul searching and finding walks. And Lucy also befriends Olive Kitteridge, who is now 93 and resident of a local nursing home.

What Tell Me Everything does best is entangle characters we know and love (don’t worry if you’ve not read the other books. You’ll understand that you know and love them) with each other in emotional relationships that are irresistible. In her plain-spoken prose, Strout shows us that there is nothing plain or simple in human relationships, and she gives us permission to accept that, especially in the bounds of marriage.

Tell Me Everything is not a can’t put down book, but it is the kind you will finish, and flip to the beginning to read again and again. I miss these characters when I’m not reading them.

Tell Me Everything was released September 10, 2024, by Random House. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune (excerpt)

 

I was so delighted to be revisiting the world of The House on the Cerulean Sea that I devoured this excerpt. Our Beloved Arthur has returned to the island after a 28 year absence and hopes to revive the love and community of magical children. All of our favorites are in this excerpt, from lovable Chauncey the bellhop to Lucy, who can’t help his parentage and impulses. I would encourage readers to read the House on the Cerulean Sea first, (in fact, it is one of my most often recommended reads) because the fiction of Beyond the Sea will be even more lovely. I can’t wait to finish this book when it is released!

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the excerpt!

The Thirteenth Husband by Greer Macallister

 

Aimee Crocker was a real-life heiress to California Railroad wealth. Inheriting millions at only ten years old, Aimee is probably as close to American Nouveau royalty as they come. She did a good job of being the spoiled rich girl, going through husbands, and continents along with the money. She’s been affectionately dubbed the queen of Bohemia.

Though Greer Macalister did an admirable job of staying true to the facts in this historical fiction, the facts were just too much for me. Aimee made stupid mistakes, with marriages and the things she enjoyed, including her sexual escapades. She believed in mystics and often took their advice and predictions to heart, in ways that boggled common sense. I was tired of her antics, before we got to the fourth husband, and the rest of the book felt tedious to me. The sprinkling of supernatural references, though I’m sure were completely accurate, just was over the top for me. Much, I assume, like Aimee Crocker herself.

As a woman in 2024, I have to admire her independence, strength and curiosity. Having money let her explore the limits of each, and I never felt that she truly ever found what she was looking for.

The Thirteenth Husband was released on August 6, 2024. Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the review copy.